


A Detective in Junction

by whatsanapocalae



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Adoption, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Artificial Intelligence, Body Horror, Burns, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Doppelganger, Eye Contact, Eye Trauma, Fire, Gun Violence, Hallucinations, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Head Injury, Headaches & Migraines, Healthy Relationships, Implied abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Masturbation, Meta, Multi, Oral Sex, Original Character Death(s), Polyamory, Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Slow Burn, Surreal, Threesome, Threesome - M/M/M, Trans Female Character, Transphobia, bury your homophobes, cum swapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2019-10-02 09:59:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 22
Words: 90,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17262182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsanapocalae/pseuds/whatsanapocalae
Summary: A year after Sebastian got himself, Lily, and Stefano out of Union, a year after Myra took down Mobius, a year after Juli started looking and trying to bring Mobius' plans out into the open, and she finds something else, someone else. It's in the middle of the night when Sebastian gets the call, when he knows, without a doubt, that Joseph is out there, trapped in a hivemind without a queen, that he has become the core of another instance of STEM. He's going back, but this time he has Stefano at his side, as much as he wished that he didn't.This is a sequel to A Doctor in Union.





	1. Diving Back In

Sebastian groaned, glaring at his phone where it sat on the bedside table, lit up and buzzing and waking him. He slept lightly, napped through parts of the day, and there were many nights in which he didn’t sleep at all. He’d only barely fallen asleep. He should have ignored it, wrapped an arm around Stefano’s shoulders and gone back to sleep. No one ever texted him though, there had to be a reason for it. 

He picked it up, the air chilly against his arm. Stefano grumbled in his sleep, if he was asleep, as the cold traveled down his back from the shift in blankets. The phone didn’t tell him much when he answered it. 

‘Located JO. -JK’

His glare deepened, not understanding the code. The phone number wasn’t one that he recognized. For a moment he considered it a joke, especially because of the JK, but then his brain turned on fully and he bolted up out of bed, and there was no way that Stefano wasn’t awake after that. 

He had to go. He had to go now. 

He called the number back, even as Stefano groggily pulled himself up into a sitting position, a hot hand soft on his back. 

“Where is he?” Sebastian gritted out, the sleepiness still in his voice, making it play-doh and slow. 

“I don’t know if I should say it over the phone, otherwise I would have texted the coordinates,” Kidman sounded tired but in the way that she hadn’t slept yet. Sebastian could hear people in the background, lots of people. 

“I thought you said Mobius was gone.”

“It is, but that still leaves a lot of other people out there wanting the technology. I haven’t even made it to the facility yet; I’m just hoping that I’ll be the first one to enter it.”

A panic was starting to grow in Sebastian’s chest, his heart pounding. Stefano was rubbing circles against his shoulder blade, trying to calm him. Joseph, found and possibly alive. He’d been hoping, he wasn’t a praying man but he’d considered it a few times, for Joseph to be alright. He definitely wasn’t alright but he was, possibly, salvageable. This was the first he’d heard anything about Joseph since finding out he was even alive. 

“Where are you?” he switched tactics. 

“I’m at the airport in Chattanooga, Tenessee.”

Sebastian pulled out of Stefano’s hold and out of the bed, dragging his jeans on from where he’d dropped them the night before. Stefano was shadowing him, which he did so well now that he was healthy enough to move on his own, silent in the darkness. If he hadn’t been there when Stefano got better, he would have been terrified of the change. 

“I’m on my way.” 

“We’re on our way,” Stefano corrected. Sebastian looked at him, seeing only the light of his phone reflecting in Stefano’s eye and nothing more. 

“Text me when you get here,” Kidman hung up. 

“So, where are we off to in the middle of the night?” Stefano asked, scooting past Sebastian for his cane and then over to the light switch, making them both half blind with light. 

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Sebastian grabbed a shirt and threw it on, not even looking at what it was. “And I need you here, to watch over Lily.”  
Stefano opened a drawer in his dresser, pulling out a pair of dark olive slacks. “You sound as if it’s some sort of emergency and you should know by now that I don’t intend to make you go through something like that on your own. We can get a sitter for Lily.”

Sebastian paused a moment, uncertain. He was fairly certain that he’d never mentioned Joseph to Stefano. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t. Joseph had been such a huge part of his life and when he was gone, Sebastian had fallen into the worst depression of his life, not that he could claim all of that was on Joseph’s apparent death. 

“It’s two in the morning,” Sebastian grumbled. 

“Well, can it wait until an actually humane time of day then?” Stefano slipped into a pale yellow dress shirt, “You’re going to have to explain to both of us what’s going on, after all.”

“Yeah, yeah, shit, I’m sorry,” Sebastian rubbed at his face. “Yeah, I’ll tell you in the morning. I’m just, I’m going to get ready in the mean time. I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep.”

Stefano nodded but didn’t get undressed. He moved with Sebastian in silence, packing along with him. He noted the low amount of clothing that Sebastian was packing and followed suit, as if he knew that there wouldn’t be much need for a change of clothes in whatever adventure Sebastian was going on. Sebastian wanted to give in, to tell him right then what was happening. He didn’t want to go over it twice though. He didn’t want to argue with Stefano right yet, even though he knew that this would lead to that. He didn’t want Stefano going with him, didn’t want him ever falling into STEM again. 

By the time morning came and Lily was awake he was a jumbled pile of nerves, no matter how softly Stefano touched him, pressing kisses to his temple and sliding his hand along his back whenever he could. The moment that Stefano left him to go downstairs, to prepare breakfast and get coffee going Sebastian sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to breathe, trying to think. He’d been thinking all night but he still didn’t have any idea what he was going to say, how he was going to say it. 

He went downstairs a few minutes later, finding Lily and Stefano at the dining room table talking about something in hushed tones. Lily looked nervous and he couldn’t read Stefano at all, even though he could see much more of his face than he used to, Stefano getting more comfortable with his hair being a bit shorter on the right side of his face. 

“There you are,” Stefano gave him a soft smile and Sebastian’s chest tightened, the anxiety swelling. He couldn’t do this to them, not when they’d all gotten settled in. He didn’t want to do this at all, but he owed it to Joseph, didn’t trust anyone to go in there in his stead. “Would you mind alluding us on what had you so worried last night?”

Sebastian sat in his seat, a cup of coffee and a plate of toast and eggs already waiting for him. He sighed. They were so good to him, too good. They didn’t deserve any of this. 

“Kidman texted me last night,” he said, not lifting his head to make eye contact. “She found my old partner, back from KCPD, in an abandoned Mobius facility. He’s over in Tennessee and I-

“And you intend to go there and fish him out, is that it?” Stefano interrupted, his cup hiding his face. “This would be Joseph, correct?”

Sebastian balked. 

“I told him about Uncle Joseph,” Lily raised a hand meekly. “You went into the bad place with him the first time, right? You think he’s still in there or do you think he’s a bad guy now?”

Sebastian looked from Lily to Stefano, his mouth still open. “You knew about him?”

“Lily used him as an excellent teaching tool to explain your sexuality to me,” Stefano waved the question off. “You do realize that there is no way that you’re going alone, correct?”

“You’re not coming with, neither of you,” Sebastian glared, trying not to let any real anger shine through, “Kidman will be there, I’m not going to be alone. And no, I don’t think he’s Mobius. He’s probably still in STEM.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Stefano placed his coffee on the table, crossing his arms. “I am going with you.”

“You lost enough to STEM,” Sebastian shook his head, “and to Mobius. When I said you’re never going back there, I meant it.”

“And miss your reunion with your boyfriend? I think not. Sebastian, you lost far more to Mobius then I did; I lost most of what I had before I ever went to them. I do not intend to lose you to them as well! Do not forget, as well, that I had a great deal of power in Union, that I understood how to bend through the logic of that place. I would be irreplaceable to you.”

“I’m eleven years old!” Lily added, “I don’t want to come with but I’m old enough to watch out for myself! I think you’ll do way better together than you would alone! Buddy systems and all that!”

They were teaming up on him and not in the way that he’d expected. He’d thought that they’d both be against him going at all. They must have both known how much Joseph meant to him, which didn’t make any sense to him, Stefano didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be willing to share him, especially not in a romantic sense. He found himself smiling, the anxiety not gone but the anxiety for their responses at least drowned out. 

\---

The airport was busy and it was hard to get through the crowds with their suitcases and the cane that Stefano hated so much. He pretended he didn’t rely on it as much as he really did but, after a few hours on a cramped airplane his legs felt weak and stiff. He wanted to hold Sebastian’s hand, not the cane, but he rested against it with each step. 

He could feel anxiety prick at him, a thick buzzing in his veins, an urge to stop and breathe at the same time that it was propelling him forward. He swallowed it down. He didn’t need it. It wasn’t helpful. Sebastian needed him to be strong right then. He didn’t know if he could be. He kept thinking about going back down, wondering if he would wake up this time, since he’d barely been able to last time. He’d been lucky last time and he’d been lucky every day for the past year; that luck would run out eventually. 

Sebastian raised an arm and Stefano jumped, not expecting it. Sebastian was on his bad side, which he did when he was nervous, thinking that Stefano didn’t recognize it. Usually it made him feel safe, having someone he trusted protecting that side, but he couldn’t feel safe now, he couldn’t feel much aside from dread. 

Sebastian was waving to a woman, to Juli, who was waiting for them at one of the little cafes that cost a fortune. Stefano had only met her a few times, when he was healing, and he knew that he had made a terrible series of impressions in such a weak and meager state. He held his head higher, tried to be more imposing. He’d come a long way. 

She didn’t smile when she approached them, just clutched the briefcase at her side and made sure there was no one watching her. She’d told Sebastian that Mobius was done for, but she was far too paranoid for such a response. He’d say that it made him uneasy, but he was already uneasy. 

“I rented a car, come on,” she said, in place of a greeting. They followed her in silence, out of the air conditioning and out into the heat, to a small black car that was so uncharacteristic that it had to be on purpose. She opened the trunk and they both put their bags inside before climbing into the back, Juli driving. 

Once they were belted in, Stefano’s cane over his lap, Juli opened the briefcase, pulling out some files and passing them back. Stefano took one while Sebastian had the other two and the car was started and out of the parking lot before they even had them open. 

The file that Stefano had was on the Core, a ten year old boy named Jonathon. His last name was a large black stripe. Stefano’s hands started to shake as he read about the boy, about his high scores in standardized tests, about his wealth of empathy, about his love of art. He was just like Lily, even the terminology was the same as what Sebastian had quoted from Mobius. Lily had been taken away in the falsified fire though and, for Jonathon, the opposite was true, the fire had claimed his parents. There was no one to care that he was gone. 

Jonathon was written as being clever and artistic, showing great promise but with obsessive traits. Stefano wasn’t reading in too much depth, he didn’t want to know all of the details. This all felt too familiar. He glanced over at Sebastian’s file instead, where he was reading on a young woman, Amber Fairen. She was a romance writer, 25, but none of her stories had ever been published. At the top of the page was the same terminology that was on Jonathon’s, just with a different number: Core Candidate #9. 

“Are there multiple Cores?” Stefano asked, reaching out for the other file in Sebastian’s lap. 

“Yeah, this is the most experimental version of STEM I’ve ever heard of,” Juli explained. “There’s no people involved, so you aren’t going to have to deal with civilians, aside from the Cores. I guess they saw that there were too many issues with just having a single Core in place and decided to try with three.” 

“And the reasoning for there being a child?” Stefano continued. Sebastian was only half listening but he perked up at that, anger flashing over his features. 

“Same reason as with Lily. There’s a level of innocence in children that haven’t been exposed to trauma and they are impressionable. They’re easy to control and manipulate.”

Stefano reached out to put his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. He could see the tension growing in his brow. 

“No people though, that’s good, that means that there wont be any monsters, nothing like the Lost.”

Sebastian glanced at him. He swallowed. He’d never seen Sebastian so angry and he couldn’t help but feel like it was directed at him. He was just trying to get some answers though, know as much as he could before they went in. 

“There’s another major difference, they implied a Lucid Unit for Cerebral Integration,” Juli explained. There was no answer from the two men and she paused, her eyes trained on the road before she went into it, collecting her thoughts, “I saw a little bit of the planning for the Luci, but I never saw it used, I didn’t know it was completed. It’s a sort of artificial intelligence that was put in place for ease of cataloging and mapping STEM, since the map could be changed by the Cores at any time. They’re also used to report any errors to the Mobius members who would enter for testing purposes.”

An artificial intelligence? Stefano had heard that such things were in development but he didn’t think anything like that would be usable so early. Mobius acted as if they were gods though, it was completely possible that they had surpassed the rest of the world by bypassing ethics and other pesky laws. 

“You think the Luci could be dangerous?” Sebastian finally spoke up, handing Amber’s file over to Stefano. He didn’t open the next one. Stefano was certain it was Joseph’s. 

“I’m not going to say they wouldn’t be. With the way the Cores and the other test subjects have altered the surroundings in the past, I wouldn’t trust anything to be safe really. Just take it slow.”

\---

He didn’t think there was a chance, not really. He hadn’t imagined that Joseph could be alive, not after he saw Kidman shoot him, but then he’d gone back in after Lily and Kidman had told him that Joseph was alive. He’d been so distracted though, with rescuing Lily, with getting Stefano out of STEM and then back on his feet, that he hadn’t had time to really think about Joseph. Joseph, who had been in STEM this whole time, had been living in one of these nightmare worlds, with only two other people, who could have been allies or enemies. 

He should have tried harder. He should have tried earlier. He shouldn’t have left Kidman to hunt for him on her own. 

She pulled up to the facility, which looked like an old water purification building, with mildew growing up the walls and the grass overgrown and a few creeping vines climbing up the sides. Stefano gave him a small smile, a squeeze to the shoulder, before he unbuckled and climbed out of the car. Sebastian sighed, following his lead. 

It reeked. It smelled like Beacon, like the sewers underneath it, where the water was a dark and deep red from all of the blood and viscera that was mixed in with the water. It smelled like rotten meat and cold bile and mildew and the sickeningly sweet scent of garbage on a hot day. As they drew closer to the door, which sat open with a chair shoved against it to keep it from closing. There was a pile of limbs and flies and mistakes, of the bodies that Juli must have dragged out of the building all on her own. She wasn’t looking at them, she was unreadable, her face blank as she went into the building. 

It looked like a Mobius building on the inside, all white tile and cement, cold and barren and clean, aside from the swivel chair that was at the end of a long smear of blood. He squeezed Stefano’s hand. He shouldn’t have been here. This wasn’t Stefano’s job. Stefano gave him a small smile and a squeeze of the hand back, as if there was nothing wrong. Everything was wrong. 

Kidman hadn’t been overly talkative before this, had always given more questions than she answered, but now she led them past offices and labs and examination rooms without a word. She was pale, a sheen of sweat on her brow. She looked like she was coming down with something. She may have been, just from touching all of those corpses. 

The STEM room was more complicated than the one for Union, which was more complicated than the one for Beacon. There were three of those metal cylinders, the same kind that Lily had been in, in a cluster in the center, the wires and tubes coming from them bound in different colored transparent tubing to keep them separate and recognizable as they led to monitors. There were eight tubs around the tubes and they were ergonomic, actually built for comfort and short time use. The people who went in weren’t supposed to stay in, the trips were meant to be shorter. 

There were blood stains everywhere. 

“You should get dressed, do whatever you need to do before getting in,” Kidman explained. “I can give you a moment if you want.”

There were security cameras in the corners of the room. Those made him feel a lot less private than Kidman not being there would. He didn’t care if Kidman saw him naked, he didn’t have much shame in those regards, she’d seen him much worse than just naked. Stefano looked uncomfortable though and his eye was trained directly at one of the tubs as if it were something much more than it was. He was looking at it because he knew what it actually was. 

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good,” he shooed her away, letting go of Stefano’s hand to stroke up his arm. He didn’t even turn to watch her leave, had his attention on the man before him, who was pale and still intent on that tub. “Hey, you okay?”

Stefano bit his lip and nodded. “We’ll be in contact, won’t we? She can extract us whenever we need to be?”

“I have no intention of letting you out of my sight,” Sebastian promised, wished that his older promises were still holding up. “But yeah, we’ll both have communicators, remember? If we get separated, we’ll be able to find each other. And we can talk to Kidman whenever we need to.”

Stefano set his cane down, resting it against the tub. He drew closer to Sebastian, his hands finding Sebastian’s waist and stroking along it to wrap around him. 

“You’re scared.”

“Of course I am,” Stefano admitted, laying his head against Sebastian’s chest. “You heard what she said. There won’t be any people in there, aside from the five of us.”

Sebastian hugged Stefano back. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

Stefano shook his head against him. “It means there will be less obstacles, I’m sure, less monsters, less casualties if we fail, but it also means less distractions.”

Sebastian pulled away from him a bit, “Less distractions? Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Before, when there were more minds connected, their obsession with normality, their ideas of what Union was supposed to be, made it harder to be manipulated for those of us who knew we were within a dream. I could create, of course, but when I did so in someplace other than my own space there was a chance that it would go back to how it had been. There will be less distractions in this STEM, which means that we’ll be able to change it without trying.”

“You think you’ll revert,” Sebastian sighed, realizing what Stefano was dancing around. He closed his eyes. “Stefano, that’s not going to happen. You were changed by Theodore, by Paolo, to become that killer. It’s up to you what you’ll become now. And I’ll be at your side all the while. If you think you’re going to falter, you can lean on me.”

“And if I hurt you?” Stefano asked. 

“That’s not going to happen.” Sebastian kissed him, long and slow, reminding him that there was more to him than words. He was a man of action and that wasn’t always a good thing, but Stefano melted against his touch.

\---

He had never expected to come back here. He had never wanted to. Juli had told them what to expect and it was so different from Union, but he still didn’t think that he was ready. He lay down in the tub, letting the fluids wash over him. His hands were on the sides of the tub though, knuckles white, and he turned to Sebastian, hoping for just one more argument, one more excuse as to why he shouldn’t come. He had been brave before, had acted like this wasn’t a compounding of trauma, but now it was happening, now it was real, and he wanted escape. Sebastian’s eyes were closed, his brows furrowed in concentration. They were going to do this. 

“Don’t worry,” Juli put her hand on his shoulder, plugging him into the machine. “I’ll be out here for you. If it ever gets to be too much, you let me know. I’ll extract you as fast as I can.”

He nodded. That helped a little, even though he knew that if they came out they’d have to start over from the initial insertion point. He let go of the edges and let himself slide further under the liquid, taking one last look at the metal tanks that held the Cores. 

This wasn’t like Union. In Union there had been only Lily and he hadn’t seen how they’d kept her in a metal chamber. There had been hundreds of tubs, like the ones that they were in, all of them citizens of that imaginary world. 

He wasn’t ready for this. He’d ever be ready. 

He closed his eye, following Sebastian’s lead, and suddenly he was falling back into the fluid, falling and plummeting, eye flying open to watch as so much of that white liquid fell away from him. He was unable to breathe, unable to fight against his drop into the depths. He felt himself start to choke on the nothing, reaching at nothing, wondering why Juli wasn’t pulling him up, wasn’t pulling him out. The liquid wasn’t that deep but he was miles down, the lights from outside a soft glow in the distance. He was struggling, trying to shove his way upward, but he felt a weight on his chest, a weight that was pulling him down. He opened his mouth but all that came out were the air bubbles that he so desperately needed. 

He was dying. He had been a fool to agree to this. He’d known it at the time, too. But now he was drowning. Now he was suffocating. He was dying and it was pain and it was hands on his throat, in his lungs, shoving liquid into him. 

And then it stopped and he was floating and there was no liquid around him. Either that or he didn’t need to breathe. He wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t suffering any more. He was slowly sliding down towards a field of pale blue grass, all of it reaching up for him, looking as if it would catch him and cradle him and pull him down into comfort. He looked around but he didn’t see Sebastian anywhere in this space. He wondered if Sebastian was in a place quite this beautiful or as terrifying. 

He drew towards the bottom and he realized that there was no grass beneath him. The gentle swaying beneath him was not soft stocks but drowned fingers pale and blue from lack of air. They were attached to reaching arms, ready to grab him and keep him, to drag him down and make him one of them. He threw out his arms, trying to slow his decent, looking around for anything that he could grab onto. There was nothing but that field. He had no choice. 

He kicked out, trying to keep the hands away. They did not care about broken or bloody fingers. The trailed their fingers over his socks, clung to his lounge wear, and held him tightly. He considered kicking off his pants in order to escape them but they were already holding him by the ankles, their skin so cold that it chilled him. It was elegant, in a way, the way that the hands all moved together, the field a garden of expression. It looked like an art piece that he would have made in a different life. Where he was now though, on this side of the exhibit, he was not so much an audience member as he was an unwilling participant. 

The hands were heavier than the weight on his chest had been and when they grabbed they pulled, arms sliding into the field as if they were nothing more than tube worms. They were forced to release him as their fingers were separated by unadulterated earth. He stood among them, more tall ones waving at him, beckoning him closer, others trying to shove behind him. They were pointing him in a direction, towards a slanted building that kept flickering and flashing, glitching out into squares before scrambling into a different building altogether. There were five of them, if he had to guess, though it was confusing as some of them stole parts of others and they didn’t cycle in an order. The shorter ones were stretched out to match the heights of the taller ones, adding to the confusion. He did recognize the apartment building he had grown up in though and seeing it filled him with a dread that he had not allowed himself to feel while with Sebastian, ignoring his own painful childhood memories while recounting what good ones he still remembered. 

There was no where else to go. He had to go towards the building. As he moved the arms shuffled and tightened, pulling down so he could cross, stepping on uncaring fingers as he went. Eventually the fingers ran out and the field looked like it was made out of black glass, only a few feet away from the entrance. 

The building glitched, breaking into more pieces, breaking up further than it had any time before, and then shattering, colors and squares breaking apart and flying out, changing shape and color, forming a street that led to a town in the distance, wispy woods growing around it, trying to invade the cement past a weak wooden fence. 

There was a fork and down the other side was Sebastian, who didn’t seem to be anywhere near as disoriented as he was. Sebastian was, however, smoking slightly and Stefano knew not to ask about whatever fire Sebastian had had to put out on his way here. He knew Sebastian’s past and he knew his nightmares. He didn’t need to bring them up. 

He was glad to see that Sebastian was dressed like a normal person, no wandering around in the sweats that he had been in when they had stepped into the tubs just minutes before. He was wearing a brown, pinstriped vest and brown slacks that Stefano had never seen before, his white dress shirt unbuttoned a bit to reveal a hint of his chest, his neck unconstrained by a tie. Glancing down at himself he was glad to see that he was decently dressed as well, crimson slacks and a deep blue satin dress shirt, much more comfortable and much more him than the comfortable clothes he’d been told to wear. He recognized them as well, old clothes but feeling fresh and new, some of the first clothes he’d purchased once being released from the military’s care in America. 

Stefano rushed over as best he could with the light limp that still threatened him so often, taking Sebastian’s hand in his own and drawing close. Sebastian gave his hand a light squeeze and offered a damaged smile, which Stefano would always take, even if it filled him with a concern he was still learning how to form. 

“Regretting it yet?” Sebastian asked, trying to tease but there was no merriment in his voice. 

Stefano tugged on his hand, making him stumble closer to him so he could press a kiss to his cheek, to pretend that what he had seen had not unsettled him and made his hands itch to create. “I would only regret it if I did not find you on the other side.” 

Sebastian’s smile reached his eyes then, before they turned away, towards a lightly glowing figure down the road. Stefano turned his attention to her as well, although there was no where else he could look, eventually, as she was standing in front of a roundabout which held a large imposing tree. There was a wooden sign planted in the roundabout with a very familiar image of a tree that looked far more like a brain than could be coincidental. 

“Hello,” the woman said as they drew near, her voice a perfect monotone. Stefano hated her immediately. Everything about her was flat and bland, even though she was glowing faintly, even through her bland gray pantsuit. “You may call me Luci. Welcome to Junction.”

Stefano was impressed. He wasn’t expecting the A.I. to look so human. It was accurate but uncanny, just slightly off in the motions. 

She cocked her head, eyes looking them over in a mechanical manner and Stefano was brought to the conclusion that she was scanning thm. “I am an A.I., set in motion to accommodate and direct Mobius scientists through Junction. The fact that you do not recognize me give me cause to believe that you are an infiltration in the system. Name and registration, please.”

Sebastian looked at Stefano, but he had no registration here either. 

“We were sent in for repairs,” Stefano explained, trying to come up with something believable, “and we are not altogether Mobius scientists. We were not given proper registration numbers as we were expected to meet other scientists here. Give us a moment to contact our superiors?”

She looked at him as blankly as before. “There have been no Mobius agents within STEM in 298 days. The Cores are out of alignment and need to be re-calibrated. There is a long list of repairs that need to be accomplished, but I cannot allow you entry until you have your registration.”

“Understood, my dear,” Stefano gave her a smile that would have charmed a real woman of her ilk. She did not respond to it. “We will return momentarily.”

He still had Sebastian’s hand in his own and he turned them to go back a few steps, pulling out the radio that was stuck on his belt, unnoticed until just then. Sebastian was looking at him quizzically but that was fine, there were many times in which Sebastian didn’t catch onto things as readily as he did. 

“Juli? It seems we’ve run into a small hindrance.”

“Already? That’s impressive,” she sounded amused at least, if a little out of breath. 

“We’ve met the illustrious Luci and she was hoping for our registration, could you make us some, right quick?”

He heard something drop heavily onto the floor, with a light squish that, paired with the lack of reality he was now in, reminded him greatly of his exhibit in City Hall.  
“Uh, yeah, give me a few seconds.” 

He clipped the radio back onto his belt. Sebastian looked proud. He’d had people tell him that they were proud of him before, had people tell him how impressive his work was, but Sebastian was the first one who made him feel like it was true, that it wasn’t a stroke to his ego. He could still feel Luci’s cold eyes on them and, whatever mood that would swell in his heart was dashed before anything could come of it. 

“Alright,” Juli sighed from her home on Stefano’s waist, “get the radio close up to it.”

Stefano returned to Luci and held out the radio, letting Juli state their names, falsified occupations, and a long list of numbers. Stefano tried to memorize his but it was too long and she only said it once before a small smile flitted onto Luci’s boring face. 

“Welcome to Junction, might I point you in a direction of your choosing or shall I give you the list of malfunctions?” 

“We’re heading for the Core, Joseph Cedric Oda,” Sebastian said, deliberate and to the point. 

Luci seemed to think on that for a moment, getting confused more than a machine had any right to. “The Cores are not in proper alignment and may not be in the correct quadrants,” she explained. “Block 24A-31E is Core JO’s primary state of establishment, otherwise known as The Junction City Police Department.”

“Of course,” Sebastian gritted his teeth. Stefano didn’t understand why. They had both been detectives together, Sebastian had told him so on the flight over, so finding him in a place that he would find comfort and understanding in was not much of a surprise. “Thanks.”

“A pleasure to be of assistance,” Luci stilled, no longer active now that it was clear that Sebasastian was done speaking with her. 

“Come on,” Sebastian squeezed his hand, “We’re going to need to get a move on, I don’t care if Juli said there are no monsters, this place gives me the creeps.”

Stefano nodded. Even with Luci offline he felt like he was being watched.


	2. Through the Flames He Saw It

Sebastian dragged Stefano down the street, keeping close to the side, his ears pricked. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, though he didn’t know the layout that Luci had used. It sounded like a grid system but the roads curved and didn’t quite match with that and he couldn’t see the numbers that Luci had given them. He desperately hoped that it wasn’t a level, as if this place was also a hundred blocks deep. Even then that didn’t make sense. 

Stefano was, blessedly, quiet, understanding the tension that Sebastian couldn’t shake, letting him grip his hand so tightly as they moved down the main street, just to the first house. It was nothing spectacular about the house, it was a single story thing with a small, well kept yard, a dark roof, and a few rose bushes around it. It was like one of the houses in Union, like a house in the real world, only made disturbing by how it was empty. 

They went around the back of it, looking in the windows. It was perfect inside, pristine, as if there had never been anyone inside of it. There probably hadn’t been. There was a shed in the back though and that was Sebastian’s real goal, and he was glad to find it unlocked when they reached it. 

He was hoping for a ladder or something that he could use as a weapon, but there was nothing. It was just as empty as the house had been. 

“What are we looking for?” Stefano whispered, bringing his head close to Sebastian’s peering into the shed along with him. There was no need to whisper. There was no one there. But speaking in a normal tone felt wrong. 

“I need to get a layout of the city, was hoping to go up onto the roof.” Sebastian explained. Stefano raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything, even though Sebastian knew exactly what was on his mind. Kidman had given them a map on the way over and Sebastian had studied it dutifully, had memorized what he could of it. That didn’t mean anything, not in here. Both Union and Krimson had been breaking apart in STEM. He didn’t trust that the streets would stay put now. 

Stefano made his way back to the house though and studied the height of the roof. Sebastian could get up there, if he climbed up Stefano first. He doubted the thinner man could support his weight like that though, especially after years of his body being neglected. Stefano must have had the same idea. 

“If you were to lift me up, I could pull you up after me,” Stefano smirked. 

“You’d have to climb onto my shoulders,” Sebastian added. 

“I’ve climbed you before, this will be different but I rarely find displeasure in having my legs around your head.”

Sebastian wanted to laugh at that, he really did, but he forced himself to have no expression more than a hint of annoyance in his eyes. The joke was dirty, terribly so, but it was in a bad place. They needed to stay serious. He was serious. He bent down feeling the odd sensation of Stefano climbing up his back until he was standing on his shoulders. Stefano’s shoes weren’t made for this, weren’t made for running, all patent leather and thin soles. It had worked for him in Union, Sebastian wasn’t going to argue it now. 

He stood and he could feel Stefano swivel, trying to keep balance, as one of his gloved hands came down to grip at Sebastian’s head, just in case. He climbed off as quick as he could, getting onto the roof with the elegance of a cat that was, possibly, drunk, before turning and reaching down to Sebastian, arms almost too straight for Sebastian’s weight. 

Sebastian took a few steps back before taking a running jump and grabbing both of Stefano’s arms, letting him pull him up. And when they were on the roof they could see, not everything, but more of Junction, see what kind of repairs Luci had been ready to prattle off. 

The city looked fine enough, right at dusk, but there was something terribly wrong with it. His therapist, that bastard, had referred to it as ‘uncanny valley’ where something looks right but it’s just off enough that it’s terrifying to look at. In this case it would have been easy to say that the uncanny property was the fact that there was no one here, but there was truly something wrong here, far worse than that. 

“Is the road spiraling?” Stefano asked, moving to the opposite end of the house, getting closer to the road in question. 

Sebastian followed him, followed his gaze. He’d thought that Stefano had meant that the road was curved, all towards a specific building in the middle, but now that he was seeing it, he knew that wasn’t what he’d meant at all. The road was turning on itself, a large and half flattened snake of a thing, with ridges that curled around it as if someone had lifted the road, twisted it, and set it back down. 

“I don’t think that’s the worst thing,” Sebastian noted, turning his attention to the sky. It had been a sunny day, not rain but a few clouds. It was almost as nice as Union had been. The clouds here were a spiral as well, but in the classic sense, and at the eye, right in the center, there was an empty hole. 

“That looks like some sort of portal,” Stefano thought, “Or something much worse. Eye of the storm, eye in the sky, you’d think there would be an eye in there.” he shuddered. 

Sebastian put a hand on Stefano’s waist, pulling him close to his side. He knew what Stefano was thinking of, that horrible thing in Union that had followed them, that had hunted Stefano down for Paolo’s purposes. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“You know, I keep thinking that?” Stefano squeezed Sebastian’s hand all the same, right where it sat on his hip, “But there is no chance in hell that I would allow you to be here by yourself.”

Stefano pulled himself free and went to the edge of the building, assessing it before sitting down on the edge, and then he paused, back straight, and pulled himself back to his feet. He looked about ready to hop off of the roof but was stopped at the last moment. Sebastian was on his blind side, he couldn’t see Stefano’s expression through his hair and it was chilling in a way. Worse though was the emotionless way that he raised an arm and pointed deeper into the city.

Sebastian closed an eye and followed Stefano’s finger, finding it directed at something running through one of the overturned pieces of road. He couldn’t see them well, not from such a distance, but there was something erratic, too jerky, in the figures movements for him to think they were a normal human.

“I thought we were supposed to be alone,” Stefano sighed. “No monsters or people.”

Sebastian squinted, trying to see better. He wished he had a sniper rifle, just for the scope. He was sure that Stefano missed the zoom of his camera as well. “We didn’t know what to expect in here. Just because there aren’t any people in here aside from the Cores doesn’t mean they aren’t making them.” 

He turned, looking up at Sebastian, ready to say something, but then there was a crack of thunder above them and both of their attentions turned up to the sky. A bolt of lightning stretched out in the distance, followed by another crash, but then the rain came, even from the small amount of clouds that were there. 

The rain wasn’t made of water though, but paper, and they were large and yellowed sheets that fell everywhere. Sebastian stood where he was, trying to catch a few of the pages to read. They weren’t notes, nor were they warnings, just pages from a cheap but well loved book. It wasn’t one that Sebastian recognized. He was about to ignore them but then there was another crack of thunder and the pages burst into flames. 

Sebastian twisted, trying to see if there was a path, if there was anywhere that he could go, to escape the burning paper. The roof caught easily, too easily, and there was nowhere he could run that wasn’t through a growing fire. 

Stefano was screaming his name and he turned, but Stefano was trying to get to him, fighting the flames as he danced through where they hadn’t already spread. Sebastian couldn’t breathe. In just seconds he had forgotten how. There was smoke in his nose, in his lungs, and in his mind this was a different house, in a different time, and he could hear his little girl’s voice calling for him. The moment he took a single step though there was a creaking of the roof protesting. He couldn’t move. He knew that, if he did, he was going to fall. He was going to fall if he stayed there though, and the flames would consume him. 

Fire. Why did it always have to be fire? He had no choice but to move, to dart through the flames. He tried, made it a few feet, almost to Stefano, when the roof collapsed and he fell down and down and down into the house. He wasn’t sure if he was the one screaming or if that was Stefano. 

He grunted, opening his eyes, hating the sight before him. He was home. He was really home, the old house, the one that had burned down. Kidman had warned them about this but he hadn’t expected it to be so easy, for him to have such an affect so early. Beacon had been effected by the memories of everyone inside of it and most of the people had been too weak to do much. It was why Sebastian had run through the city, why so much of it looked like Ruvik’s home town, and why there were so many things that made no sense at all. In Union, everyone went into it with an idea of what to expect and the city stayed in that shape because everyone was working together to make it that way. 

There were less people. Sebastian was having more of an affect. It was just like Stefano feared. 

He tried to move but there was a joist stuck in his calf, right where the phantom pain of a chainsaw had troubled him for months after he’d first escaped. He grabbed at it and pulled, wrenching it out of his leg. There was screaming from upstairs, high pitched. Lily was calling for him. He shoved himself forward, into the living room proper. He didn’t feel the pain or the blood running down his leg. There was too much else going on. 

Everything was burning. He didn’t want to go upstairs. He’d already dealt with all this. 

“Dad! Help!” Lily screamed again and it didn’t matter that he didn’t want to go, that he knew that she was safe, far away from here, with a babysitter and a long list of emergency contacts. He was throwing himself forward all the same, dragging his damaged leg to the stairs that he knew he couldn’t rely on, and climbing them. 

When more of the roof fell he was knocked down to his hands and knees, forced to climb up them that way, which was better for his still bleeding leg. They’d said it was an electrical fire, but the flames were everywhere. Even over all of the smoke he could smell the kerosene. 

He forced himself to take the corner, to rip open the door that still had little drawings of butterflies on it. There was a figure, standing in front of the window, a silhouette. She wasn’t Lily. She was much too tall. She swayed slightly, looking at Sebastian in the dark room. There was no fire in here. 

“Not Mobius, no,” the woman sighed, her voice airy but self assured, “You’re fun. I’ve never seen someone do this so soon after arriving.”

“Are you part of The Core?” he asked, “Amber Feran?” 

She cocked her head at that, a finger to her chin. “Oh, I like this. I wonder just how much you know. What the files on me really said.”

“I’m part of the rescue team, I’m here to get you out!” Sebastian explained, trying to calm his nerves, even as he heard his house burn around him. “Come with us to the extraction point.”

She laughed and the sound was as dry and brittle as the wood around them. “No, that’s not going to happen. They asked me to come in here to make the place a bit more lively, give it some charm, practice my craft on it. Why would I leave just when I got everything settled? I think you’d better get ready because I’ve been waiting for a protagonist for this story for a long time.”

“A what?” Sebastian asked but she was doing something else, mimicking the motion of drawing a gun. Without one, she just pointed at him. 

“Pow!” 

Everything went dark. 

\---

When Sebastian had fallen, when the roof had swallowed him up, a torrent of flame had shot upward, knocking him back. He hadn’t been lucky enough to avoid all of the flames as he fell to his side, rolled a few feet, and fell to the ground, but the added movements had put out what little flames he’d found himself caught on. He didn’t have time to appreciate that, as he pulled himself to his feet, winded and battered by the fall, al of his thoughts on Sebastian.

Stefano threw himself on the door but it didn’t budge. It was more than just locked, it was just not moving. It was as if it wasn’t a real door at all, just painted in place. He moved to the windows next, trying to throw himself against them, trying to break through. The glass didn’t move. It jiggled, a little, and that was more than the door, but it was still nothing. 

He could see Sebastian, pressed up against one wall, right where he’d fallen, tearing a large chunk of wood out of his leg. He called out to him. Sebastian didn’t hear him. He heard something though, was looking up at the ceiling. The house was only a single story, there wasn’t an upstairs, the only sound could have come from the roof and all Stefano could hear was the fire. Sebastian ran towards the back of the house, away from him, and threw open a door into another room, what Stefano could only guess was a bedroom. 

He’d failed. They’d only been there for a short time, not even an hour, and he’d already been separated from Sebastian in a way that could mean his death. This place didn’t need citizens to make it dangerous, not if the people in it brought their own means of destruction. 

The flames were building though, and the air was so dry. Stefano had to take a step back, get away from the building. He could know that it was a dream as much as he wanted, that wouldn’t stop him from getting burned. 

A window burst, finally, but in the wrong direction and a plume of flame came spilling out, shooting diagonally and not stopping. It was like a flame thrower had been left with the trigger pulled. Another window shattered and another unending river of flame flew past him on the other side. He was given only one direction, one way of escape, and it was in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go. 

He couldn’t get to Sebastian. Not like this. He turned, hoping that he could go around the house, get in from the other side. He wasn’t able to take a single step. 

The flames were everywhere, he was surrounded, all but one path and in that path was a man in black, a red scarf around his neck and a cane in his hand. 

“All this time, Stefano, and you’re still tricking yourself with these distractions?” Theodore’s voice was the same as it had been, that deep tone with just enough heat to reveal the fire within him. “You are more than this. You are more than Stefano Valentini, house boyfriend. Where did your inspiration go?”

Stefano took a step back, feeling the flames at his back. Theodore wasn’t impressed, not by him, not by his response. 

“When did you last create something?” he asked, a hand going behind his back before coming back and reaching towards him, holding his Ventura. 

He hadn’t. He hadn’t made anything since Union, in almost a year. He didn’t think he could, not with the physical therapy and the therapy and with taking care of Lily and being with Sebastian and with being a normal human being. He’d done some drawings with lily but he had made no art. 

Theodore was standing there, in his way, the camera outstretched. He didn’t think he had a choice here. 

“I’m not joining you, my old friend,” Stefano explained as he took the camera in hand, the weight rapturous against his fingers, “you are already dead.”

“Of course,” Theodore smiled at him, “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to. I’m just here to remind you of what you could be, the power you once possessed. In here, you could be an artist once more.”

Theodore stepped to the side, finally allowing Stefano a chance to step past him, out into Junction proper, past all of the flames. To be an artist, that was what he was, deep in his core, deep in the marrow of his bones. He had to make something, he had to sculpt. The city was empty, like a fresh canvas. 

Anything he made here would be here though, not in the real world. Nothing he did here would matter to anyone other than who was here. He turned back to the burning house, but there was no burning house anymore. It wasn’t just that the house was gone, but the lot was completely empty. There was no grass, no smoke, no nothing. 

Which meant no Sebastian. He’d meant to go around, to get Sebastian out of the house before he’d burned to death. But he’d failed. He stood there, just staring, trying to feel something. He’d heard about people in love, how they could feel if the other was in danger. He’d always had such a disconnect with his feelings that he’d never even considered that realistic. Now though, he was certain that he did love Sebastian. He closed his eyes. There was nothing though. 

He ran into the lot, unsure as to why. He could see that there was no Sebastian there, but he also knew that there had to be something there. People did vanish in STEM, he was no exception and had used that fact to his advantage many times, but Sebastian didn’t seem to have the knack for it. If it happened to Sebastian, it was happening to him, not because of him. 

His first step crunched and he paused, looking down. Hidden among the grass, too much of it to be truly hidden, were hundreds of shards of broken white bones. Immediate flashes filled his mind, of basins made of bone to hold flowers made of curled flesh, of bones carved into macabre delicacies to entertain those who could not understand the beauty in art and those who had lost the capability to. He shook the inspired images from his mind, though he did raise his camera to photograph the scene. He knew that the photographs would not carry over into reality, but he had stronger memories of what he photographed in Union, those images still frames in his dreams. It would give him inspiration later.

He was hoping for something though, as he crunched through the field, a trap door or a message or something. He didn’t have any leads as to where Sebastian could be. He was in the very center of where the house had been when he saw something new, one of the bones having something on it. He picked it up, turned it over, and found that he was not stepping through the tiny remains of those who’d passed before but through small china cups, instead. A bit of a disappointment, but better, he supposed, for the masses with a more mundane palate. It did not help him though, so he dropped it, and gave up on the lot in general. 

He went into the city further. There was nothing that he could do for Sebastian right then. He wasn’t dead, that was the only thing that he could believe. He was fairly certain as well that, unless Sebastian were to transmit a great deal of energy, Juli wouldn’t be able to find him from the outside either. He didn’t want to have to rely on her anyway. Sebastian was alive because if he was dead Juli would have said something, and that was something that he had to have faith in. He wasn’t used to having faith in anything but himself. 

He was along a line of houses but none of them were places that he wanted to search. Sebastian had had the right idea, to get a better view of the city, but the house had been terribly short. He looked back up at that sky, with the twisting clouds and the hole in the center. He wondered if he could put an eye in that storm, if he could make something like Paolo had, if he could view everything in the same lens. He took a step forward, than another, but each step was made with his body, landing on oddly curving cement. It wasn’t stepping and landing somewhere else. He had no power here. 

He was not the artist he had once been. 

He could see some taller structures and some cars lining the street, as if this was an actual town with actual people. Even if he were to create here, in the way that Theodore had inspired, he wouldn’t have the materials needed. He started to walk, to think of where Sebastian might end up, towards one of the larger buildings. He’d at least be able to see the rest of the town from there.


	3. What Makes a Home

He woke to the sound of rustling, of pages turning, and of a quiet murmuring. I sounded like a mother, reading to a child, but hidden away, in secret. The pages were louder than the voice. He opened his eyes to darkness, to a cold floor under his back, and to a creeping, surrounding chill that surrounded him, permeated the space. He didn’t know where he was, but he wasn’t home anymore. 

He turned on his flashlight, sweeping the space in light. It wasn’t much, what looked like a ruined hovel, something old but not old enough to be a ruin. There was nothing on the cobblestone floor to soften it, nothing to make the house seem like a home. There was a table with some wooden chairs, with a familiar lantern upon it and he lit it, doing more to brighten up the room than his flashlight could do. 

The light revealed a spattering of pages, all ripped up, in a mound on the table. He looked over them quickly, trying to understand if they were important to him. The words on them were disturbing, what he could make out, written in a childish hand. They were dry and without much interest but they still described ghastly scenes of dismemberment and suffering, more in the style of a story than an accounting of actual events. He only put enough of it together to understand that it was purely fictional before he turned away from it. 

And he recognized the house. It wasn’t one he’d been in before but it was similar enough. It was the same kind of house as in that village, though he didn’t know if that was his doing or not. It was the same set up, the same amount of age, the same amount of everything, the same horrible cross on the wall. He still didn’t know what that meant, what the religion was even called, but it instilled a fear in him that this was all the same as before, that Ruvik was here, somewhere, to affect this reality. 

He grabbed his radio and then stilled. He was alone. The windows were grimy but he could still see through them. He didn’t see Stefano outside. He didn’t see him anywhere. It really was just like Beacon, they were separated as fast as possible. He was going to call Juli, but now Stefano was more important. He dialed it to his frequency and called. 

The room chilled as soon as the radio hit the correct frequency, making him pause. There was music playing nearby and he could have sworn it was the same music as always but the tune was just slightly off, the instruments out of tune enough for him to question it. He looked around, back to the table. 

There was a girl there, a watery ghost in all white, standing there, crying. Her hair was long and tied at the base, making it a long oval hanging down her back. He couldn’t see her face as she sobbed, her hands covering her face, but she could see the face of the older woman who stood on the opposite side of the table, ripping pages out of a journal and then tearing them to pieces. 

“How many times do I need to tell you, young lady? This is obscene, this is a disgrace! These things that you write about, there must be something wrong with you!” The girl cried harder. The woman didn’t stop, not in her tearing and not in her harsh words. “I swear, I don’t even know where you get these ideas! I thought we raised you better than this! I should take you to the church, have Father Averice take a look at you. This is the devil’s work!”

The girl fell to her knees, her head in her arms against the table, as the pages fell before her, and then she vanished, into nothing, the scene ending. 

Sebastian didn’t know what it meant and he didn’t really care either. He wasn’t here for memories, he was here for the Core, for Joseph, to get him out. He wanted to get the others out, of course, but they were secondary. This had to be a memory of one of them, of the writer, since she was the only girl, and it just fit. She must have been a part of the same cult as Ruvik. She was a romance writer though, there was nothing worse than unprotected sex in her work, he was certain. 

The room warmed back up. He was probably supposed to look around, find more memories, that’s how Ruvik had done it, anyway, but he wanted to contact Stefano first, had to know that he was alright. He barely had a moment to try though, before the front door opened, revealing a long winding walkway out into the darkness. 

It wasn’t that he couldn’t contact Stefano, it was that someone was trying to distract him from it. It made him worry about what would happen if he did push that button, what kind of punishment they’d both receive. He took a step out of the door. His flashlight did nothing to break through the black around him. Only a few steps out and he knew, without looking, that the door behind him was gone and he was lost in the darkness. 

\---

He started to cross the street when he heard a giggle, a high pitched and airy one, that of a young girl. He froze where he was, in the middle of the road, head swiveling to find the source. He’d heard Lily giggle a thousand times, had been the cause of it quite often and this was the same sound, the same octave and style. It didn’t sound exactly like Lily, luckily, but he wouldn’t have been too terribly surprised if it had. 

He saw the edge of a blue dress before the giggler hid behind another building, just a little bit away. He changed his trajectory, heading in that direction. He doubted that this was the writer, she had been an adult woman, and this giggle sounded young, like that of a child. There was only one child in here though, and that was a boy, so unless this was a figment of his own imagination, the figure may have been something less than human, something created by one of the Cores. 

“Excuse me?” he called out, just a couple of steps away. His leg was starting to hurt but he pushed it aside. He knew that it was all in his mind. “I believe I’m a bit lost, could you help me?”

He made it around the corner but found the alley empty. He should have expected that. He sighed and turned around, only to find the blue dress dart around another building behind him. Whoever wore it seemed to be much taller than someone Lily’s age, even though, when she spoke, her voice was just as young. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

He smiled, trying to be as charming as he could be, running his fingers through his hair to make it perfect. If the woman was young, he could charm her. If the woman was a girl he could do whatever it was he did with Lily, which was, he supposed, be more candid and silly and odd. 

“Stefano Valentini,” he offered to the air as he headed her way once again, “And now I am no stranger. What is your name so you are no stranger to me?”

“Are you a prince?” she asked. 

He paused, blinking a few times. He’d been asked what he was many times, but a prince was never one of them. Outside of Lily’s games and Sebastian’s arms he was rarely referred to as anything positive. This was not the direction of events that he had expected. “A prince? Why would you think that?”

The voice was coming from behind him now, but it was not far away at all, no longer hidden as much. This person was inspecting him, trying to understand him. He could understand that. He wasn’t supposed to be here. No one was. “You seem quite fancy. You’re not from here. And you have an accent.” 

None of those were things that made a prince but the explanation made Stefano chuckle all the same. He tried to stay demure as he turned to the empty air that she had been speaking from just a moment before. Of course, she was not there. 

“I could be a prince. Are you a princess?” he asked the air. There was no response though and he slowly realized that he was, once again, completely alone in this place. He sighed, unsatisfied, and started once more on his path. There was something though, that caught his eye. 

As she’d turned him around, lead him back and forth, she had directed him at a small homey cafe. He had to laugh at the name, “JoesCups”, as a reference as to why they were there. There was some outdoor seating and, on the one closest to him, there was a large bouquet of forget-me-nots and blue roses. He was fairly certain that the girl he’d been speaking to had a favorite color. Leaning up against the vase there was an envelope and he knew that it was for him. 

He went over and lifted it, finding that it was overly perfumed to the point of headache inducing and the handwriting on it was ridiculously curled and decorative. “Mr. Valentini.” Whoever this girl was, she had an idea as to what sort of refined taste she wanted, but she hadn’t quite figured out how to curate it. His curiosity was too great to treat the envelope with reverence and he tore it open to find a light blue sheet of paper underneath, the writing on it still over the top and, added to that, written in gold ink. 

“My dear Mr. Valentini, you are cordially invited to my tea party, where we shall sup on the finest Earl Grey and scones. High fashion, especially a crown or hat, is requested but if you do not have such a hat one will be procured for you. Tea will be served at 2pm on Thursday, the 22nd. I greatly look forward to your arrival and to speak with you further, your new friend, E.M.”

He turned the piece of paper over but that was all there was on it. Whoever E.M. was, she had not given him an address. He also, had no intention of wearing a hat of any stripe, they did not work well with his face shape. An ally in this place though was something that he could not go without and he pocketed the invitation in the hopes that he would be able to attend. 

\---

Light came to Sebastian slowly, reminding him of when he was loading in from the Marrow, different parts of the world coming into the light and then into focus around him. He was in a room, all made of wood, with a plush Persian-knock-off carpet in the center. There was a window, looking out over a garden, sitting over a writing desk, which had an old typewriter on it and a worn out wooden chair beneath it. There was also a rocking chair which had an old afghan blanket folded up on the seat and a fireplace, which slowly burned pleasantly. Sebastian shuddered unconsciously. 

He looked out the window. Past the garden there was a road and beyond that was a fog that gave him the impression that this place existed alone, without the rest of Junction. It was a getaway from a getaway. 

He turned away from the window, to where he would expect a door to be. There wasn’t one though. The room was just a room and he knew that he couldn’t get out through the window. Places like this rarely did, especially when they were being controlled by someone. He was prepared at least, he knew exactly who this Core was. 

“Amber? I’m not a threat to you, I’m trying to help! Would you let me do that?” 

There was no response. From her profile, Amber didn’t seem to rely on others often. 

There was a clicking sound, a bunch of clicks, and then a ding and a small whir. He looked back at the typewriter to see that a line had been written and then shoved up, giving him space beneath to reply. “Tell me a story.” 

He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have time for any of it. He had to get back to Junction, he had to find Joseph, and he had to shut this place down. He didn’t want to be in STEM for long. 

“A story, huh?” he pulled out the chair and sat down, resting his hands on the keyboard. He’d never been great at telling stories. He could do all the voices and make Lily laugh, but there was a reason that she had decided to read to him as a bedtime tradition instead of the other way around. He thought, for a while, about what he could say, what would be entertaining, and then, he thought of what would be best for him. He was telling a story to an author and to someone that he was trying to gain the trust of. He had to find Joseph. He had a lot of stories about Joseph too and one of those would be the key to getting her to help him, he was sure of it. 

He’d never used a typewriter before and he was clunky and slow with it, making so may typos that parts of it were almost illegible. The story though, that was easy, once he’d figured out what to talk about. He wrote about Myra, first off, how she looked, how she made him feel, how entrancing it was to see her at the end of that aisle. Joseph came next, the best man, handsome in his tux, smiling lightly, standing on one side with roses and babies breath in his gloved hands. On Myra’s side were a few of the girls from work and Sebastian still remembered all of their names, even if most of them hadn’t stayed with the force for much longer after the wedding. 

He wrote about the ceremony and the dance, and how Joseph and Myra had looked so good together while he sat on one side, with his brand new father-in-law, watching and laughing and being warned of all the things that Myra would put him through. He and Joseph also had a dance together, though that one took a good many more drinks to get to, as their relationship was a secret from the rest and would have to stay that way, especially at a wedding. It had been so very nerve-wracking, just admitting to Joseph that he had asked Myra to marry him, since he loved Joseph as well, but Joseph had been so happy for them and it wasn’t like he could be part of their union any more than he was anyway. 

He did come with them, for a few days, on their honeymoon, posing as their chaperon for the masses. 

“Boring.” said the typewriter, once he was done pouring his love and adoration for both his late wife and his best friend on the pages. He had been smiling, up until that point, remembering the good times, allowed to remember Myra and Joseph without a cloud of grief, just for a moment. “Bad writing and no tension. A story is a story, at the very least.”

“What can I say?” Sebastian sighed, speaking out loud instead of through the ink, “That’s how it happened.”

Still, there was a creaking behind him and he glanced over his shoulder to see that a door had appeared on the opposite wall, siting ajar. He got to his feet, wondering if he should take the three pages he’d written, but decided to leave it where it was. It wasn’t for him, he already had the story in him. He made it to the door and pulled it open the rest of the way, hoping to see Junction on the other side. He’d hoped that Amber would care about his plight and take him directly to the police station, so he could get Joseph and they could all get out of there. 

Instead he found himself on another path, which went straight on into the fog, made of old cobblestone, buried under a thick layer of packed earth. On either side there were gravestones, older than the cobblestones in many cases, crosses and stranger crosses, the ones from Beacon and from Union, made of wood or from stone. 

The path was different but the aesthetic was the same, the location new but recognizable, as where he and Joseph had worked together to get to the church, to follow Kidman and Leslie, in that place where time made so little sense. He didn’t know why he was needed to be here, what Amber wanted from him here, or even how she knew about it. Perhaps she didn’t and this was just his doing, him making the world in the image of his memories. 

That would have made a much better story to tell her, he was sure, full of danger and intrigue. He walked down the path, the fog barely shifting, going another inch for every foot that he walked. He would be in it soon and he didn’t know what to expect then. He just hoped that he wouldn’t have to reenact his actions from back then, he didn’t have any weapons, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do anything against a massive mutated wolf at the moment. 

He paused, before entering the fog. It looked thick, he knew he’d be almost blind upon entering it. There were no alternate paths though, no way around the fog. He had no choice but to enter it. He took a step. 

He was, immediately, thrust into cold and damp. It was hard to see, but still possible. The path under his feet was mud now, instead of dirt and the graves at his sides were wet and shiny. He put a hand out, brushing the tops of them, using them as a guide for when spots were even harder to see through. 

“Sebastian?” he heard, somewhere in the distance. The voice was rough, almost a bark, hysteric even though it was deep. It was a voice that he knew, even though he didn’t recognize it exactly. “Come on, no point in hiding now!”

The voice wasn’t of someone looking for him. It was the voice of someone hunting him. He still didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t even have a syringe or anything else to take care of himself with even if he was injured. He thought to go back the way that he’d come, to head back to that cabin and hope that it had changed into a different location. Even if it wasn’t he’d rather write another story than have to fight whatever was up ahead unarmed. 

He wondered if he could sneak by it. He got down into a squat. Visibility was low for him, it had to be low for whatever else was in there. 

“How many years has it been, huh, Seb?” the voice called out before laughing, as if this was all a little joke between friends, “You think you can come back after all this and we’d be all buddy buddy again? As if nothing’s happened?”

He could see the outline of someone, a bit shorter than him, clothes close to his body, through the fog. The figure was walking around, looking for him, twitching inhumanely. It was as if he was trapped in a loop, going back and forth. In his hands was something that looked like an ax. Sebastian kept his eyes on him, studying his movements, his route, until he was certain that he could sneak past. 

And then he put his foot in a trap. 

“Shit!” he grit out before realizing it, the teeth of a bear trap digging fiercely into his calf. He fell to one knee, grabbing the sides of it, and pulling on it, trying to get that metal out of himself. 

“There you are!” the figure cackled and the loop broke, he was running towards Sebastian. 

The pain was just a slick burn in his leg for the moment, cold daggers that threatened to numb his leg. He still had a few seconds before it would flare into agony. He tore the trap open the rest of the way, freeing himself and falling back as the ax came down, right where his neck had been a millisecond before. 

The figure pulled back, ready for another swipe as Sebastian fought to get back on his feet. “After all this time, you still haven’t learned to look where your going?” 

Sebastian could see him now, could see the sores and the puss, his irises yellow as red encroached the whites of his eyes. He looked the same, was dressed the same, after all this time. He held the ax like it was a part of him, a smile as if it would break his face in two and he would laugh as it did. His voice was wrecked and his skin was peeling with something that Sebastian had only learned after the fact to call a Haunting. 

“Joseph?” he gasped. 

The Haunted parody threw the ax down again, barely missing Sebastian’s chest as he swiveled on his good leg, letting the bad one work as a ballast to help him balance. 

“Oh, the one and only!” Joseph snarled, kicking out at Sebastian’s wounded leg as he darted around him, foot connecting with the bites and making him cry out as the pain came into existence, bringing tears to his eyes as every nerve in his leg smoldered. “I thought you might want to dance with me again, just like old times!”

\---

The door was locked but that wasn’t a terrible issue. Stefano looked around for just a moment before finding a large barreled garbage can next to one of the streetlights. It wasn’t even chained in place. Empty, it was easy enough for him to grab it and hurl it at one of the windows, making it shatter. He climbed through it and into the lobby of the tall building, which was, it seemed, a hotel. It was only five stories but that was taller than all of the other buildings around it and it would hopefully have an elevator. After all this walking around, he could use a rest. 

Behind the counter there was a figure, who glared at him where he stood in front of his trespass before turning to the ledger and marking something off. He did a few more menial tasks, checking keys and checking the computer absently, before glaring back at Stefano and marking something on the ledger again. He was translucent and glowed faintly, much like Luci, and he had many of the same features. Either way, he was certain that this man wasn’t really there, just an echo of something that had been there before, possibly made real when people were brought into this module. 

Stefano fell into despair when he saw the stairs but no elevator. Not only was he alone and unarmed, but he was going to have to walk even more than he had already. He considered sitting down, just for a moment, and resting his legs, but Sebastian was still missing and he knew that he would keep going, even if he was injured, if it meant getting their task done. He knew that he wasn’t as strong as Sebastian, in mind or in body, but he did intend to make him proud, at the very least. 

He took a hold of the railing and started his walk, making his way slowly up the stairs. He missed being able to teleport. He’d thought that a lot during his recovery too. He hoped that this wasn’t going to take so long as to completely reverse all of the hard work he’d done. He didn’t bother checking the second floor or the third, as they just looked like the normal floors of a hotel and he didn’t need any more distractions on his way to the roof than his own body were giving him. 

When he got to the fourth floor though, he was surprised to find a door with a large red smear on it, almost like a pick. Almost like a safe room. 

He turned the knob. 

He didn’t know what the safe rooms looked like and he didn’t know what The Marrow looked like, even though Sebastian had described both a few times to him. This was neither, unless he had somehow created his own safe room without expecting it. The hallway before him didn’t look safe, in any regard. 

It was long and made of dark wood, with a secondary hallway growing perpendicularly from it. The walls were white and there were a few cut outs for a phone or for lounges or for a few statues. Everything was white, aside from the floors, and there was a railing on one side, protecting pedestrians from the fall on one side of the stairwell. 

It was the apartment building that he had grown up in, way back in Florencia. It was pocked with good memories as well as ill, but the ones that stood out the most were the ill. He had no other way up but the stairs in the new location and he stepped out into it, looking up at the lights that hung down from the ceiling so high up. It was a good five stories taller than the hotel he’d been in, which meant he had even more stairs to walk up, but that would give him a better view. 

He stepped into it and immediately felt cold, felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. He wrapped his arms around himself and started up the stairs. There was no point in standing still, in letting this place in, to give him memories that would not help him. There was one memory in this place, that he didn’t know if he should cherish or not, not from the original building but from the one he had created in Union, when he was new to his power, when his memories were what directed his creation more than Lily. This was the first place he’d even seen Sebastian, after all, even though they were on opposite sides at the time. 

There was blood pouring down the stairs, a small river in the center of the staircase. It was almost invisible against the dark wood. He was heading to the top story, after all. That was the story that she had died on, after all. 

He wanted Sebastian there. He wanted his hands on him, one on his elbow and the other on his waist, supporting him through the pain in his leg, through the desire to flee. He wanted to be comforted. Sebastian had made him so weak to the sensation of touch, of the desire to be loved and cared for. He had been admired before Sebastian, he knew, and he’d had great friendships, even when he didn’t think he deserved it and everyone around him was dying, but only one of them had come with the comfort of Sebastian’s, with the touch, with the gentleness. He needed that now. He’d tried not to need it at all. 

He reached the top floor. There was a door, as white as the rest of the place, although the bottom of it was stained red. He never did learn how to get onto the roof, but going through that door and into the apartment beyond, he’d be able to look out the window. It had been a beautiful view in reality. His eye was trained on the blood though, mixed with the water that seeped out from the crack beneath it. 

The door was locked but the key was in his pocket, where it belonged. This was his home, he would always be welcome here, even though being so would only bring pain. He unlocked the door and opened it. 

The interior was a mass of barbs and thorns, thick wires of roses filling it completely, no leaves but buds among the tangle.


	4. Bristling Through the Heart

Joseph slammed the ax down into his shoulder, shoving him back down to his knee. The blade was upturned, thankfully, the blade in the air, but it still felt like his clavicle was shattered. “Come on, Sebastian! I thought you were more a threat than this!” 

He turned the ax, pulled it back like a baseball bat. Sebastian grit his teeth, looking for his escape, looking for some way to keep his head. “I came here to find you, Joseph, not fight you!” 

He knew what he had to do; what had always worked, fighting back. He dove for Joseph’s legs, knocking him down onto his back. When he landed it should have knocked all of the air from his lungs but it didn’t, it just made him laugh, everything made him laugh, and the red didn’t fade from his skin. Joseph writhed and kicked out with all of his limbs, making it impossible for Sebastian to get close. If he could only get a hold of that ax, everything would have to change. 

Joseph kicked up with his legs, bracing himself on his arms, and flipped back up to his feet. That wasn’t something Joseph could do, not at his age. The ax was still in his gloved hand. He was grinning. The expression chilled Sebastian. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Sebastian grit out as Joseph rushed him once more, hardly hesitating after the fall, “Please, Joseph!” 

Joseph, slammed into him, shoving him back and he tripped on the pain in his calf. He fell against one of those graves, realized that the stones were tall enough that he could hide behind them, if he was lucky. 

“Don’t want to hurt me?” Joseph followed him, not giving him time to right himself, just climbing the stone and hopping off of it, landing on Sebastian’s chest, sprawling. “Oh, that’s cute. After all this time? After you left me behind? After I was shot in front of you and you did nothing while I bled out in the street? Now you don’t want to hurt me?”

He was straddling Sebastian and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, not enough anyway. He didn’t know what he could say to appease Joseph anyway. He was right. Everything that he was saying was right. Sebastian had failed him. Sebastian deserved all of this. 

Joseph dropped the ax to one side, changing over to his hands. He wrapped them around Sebastian’s throat, squeezing. For a moment it was slight, hardly enough to do anything. “This do anything for you Sebastian?” he cackled, “I remember it used to. After all this time, I’d bet you got yourself a new squeeze, huh? You couldn’t be bothered with waiting long enough to mourn could you? You little slut?” 

Sebastian grit his teeth, pulled in the best breath he could before the pressure intensified. His hand was reaching, his eyes lolling, looking for the ax. Joseph had dropped it just to his right. It was far away, just out of reach. It was always just out of reach. In STEM, whatever he needed, it would always be just out of reach. 

His left came up to his throat, to scratch at Joseph’s fingers, not getting anywhere through the leather. There were dark spots in his vision. He could feel his body try to fight, try to push him off, but it was awkward, his legs still sprawled over the back of a gravestone. Joseph’s fingers tightened. His hand searched, his fingers finding smooth wood but unable to grasp it. 

He tried to speak. There was no air though. There was no way he could get a word out. He could hardly see Joseph now. Everything was dark and blurry. The ax felt foreign in his cold hand, the one that didn’t want to work, the one that didn’t have any strength left to it. He gripped it as best he could. 

He looked up at Joseph. He couldn’t see him but he wanted to make believe that he was making eye contact. He had come here for him, after all. He swung up as best as he could. 

The pressure was gone. It didn’t fade away, it didn’t shift, it was gone, both off of his neck and off of his chest. He breathed, pulling himself back and away from the grave, turning on his side. He coughed a few times, his eyes watering, as he sucked in thick breaths. He was only barely aware that someone was clapping. 

He looked around. Joseph, or what was left of him, was no where in sight. The graves were slowly fading away, the world becoming a field of burned and blacked grass. The fog was darkening, becoming smoke, and he realized that he was in the yard of the burning house, that one that he had just fallen through. Amber, for there was no one else that she could have been, was standing before him, looking pleased. 

She looked every bit a writer, mousy blond hair frizzy and unkempt, tied off loosely out of her way. She wore oversized glasses with thick lenses, which made her gray eyes seem massive. She stopped clapping, but the enthusiasm on her face didn’t fade, her smile wide and expression upturned in macabre excitement. 

“See?” she pointed out, at nothing in particular, “That’s what I’m talking about! Your story lacked interest! It lacked conflict! Brothers in arms, lovers behind doors, fighting one another, trying to break through to one another, that’s where a story lies! Not in dancing at a wedding. Not a happy ending with no build! Happy endings are boring, everyone knows that! You need more drama!” 

“Drama?” Sebastian coughed out, pulling himself to his feet. The smoke in his nose made him want to bolt. “We’re not the characters in some story, we’re real people! You can’t just have me act out some scene for you!” 

She put a finger to her thin lip, looking him over, “Oh, I see, you’re one of those.”

“One of what?”

“One of those characters that just comes out fully formed!” She explained, looking him over. “Let me see… you're a hardened detective, who lost his wife and child to a terrible mystery, right? The boyfriend who also vanished makes it a bit more original at least. A pretty cliche backstory but it's a start. What comes next is far more interesting anyway.”

She had him pegged down. He'd read her file and she knew more about him then he did about her. She knew what was coming though and that was far more terrifying. 

“What's coming next?”

Her eyes lit up as the smoke started to form shapes around her. He thought it was a serpent at first but it was too lumpy, and he knew that whatever it was, there was a lot of it. The shapes were large and canine in shape, but he could already tell there was something wrong with them.

“I've been working on these puppies for a long while. I'll admit though, I've been so caught up with monsters and plots and things that I haven't even bothered with ocs! I'm so excited to see how you handle them!”

Sebastian didn't know what an oc was but it was obvious that he was supposed to be it. He grit his teeth, finding the ax still in his hands. 

He still had questions, so many of them, primarily where Joseph was, but Amber was fading away, turning into the smoke around her, while her creations were taking a more solid form. They looked like dogs, but not a specific breed, and only if dogs were made completely out of muscle. They had human faces and large unblinking eyes which rolled in their sockets. Their backs easily reached his shoulders. He was terribly outmatched. 

Glancing around, he knew that to be true. He had left Stefano right there, had run off without a word and now Stefano was no where to be seen. He was alone here, against these things. He was going to have to fight off everything by himself, like he had in Union, in Beacon, aside from the rare moments in which a partner had stayed at his side. Panic started to rise in him, that something may have happened to Stefano or that Stefano had abandoned him here. 

The first of the beasts lunged at him and he dashed to the side, swinging at the face of the one closest. Even if he wasn’t alone, even if he had a gun, there were too many of them for him to handle on his own. He kept his head down and bolted, knowing that they were faster than him, knowing that if even one of them knocked him to the ground he would be dead. He could hear them, not barking, but making these horrible whimpering sounds, like a beaten dog but it was coming through a human mouth. 

He darted across the street, over to where some cars were parked, hoping that if he crossed them the beasts wouldn’t follow. They were big though, they could jump over a car much more easily than he could. When he got closer though he found that one of the cars had it’s window open. He clenched his jaw, aiming for it. He just had to make it there. 

\---

He lifted the camera, taking another step towards the mass of roses. Each of the buds had been cut, the flowers all removed, and blood was dripping from the open wounds as if they were sap. It was beautiful in a way, such an interesting concept. His work had always involved the flowers themselves, but the lack of them, this terrible bramble, this mass of spikes that repelled him so, held it’s own type of beauty. 

The camera flashed and there was a square of blue nostalgia, shimmering as the brambles were stuck in time, as they had once been, when he was powerful. But then the square was gone and so was everything that had been in its frame. The vines were gone, cut in the perfect shape of the cube he’d produced, the vines bleeding profusely, making the fluid spilling out from underneath them thicker and more red than before. 

He took a step back, refocused. He could make his way inside. He didn’t know if he wanted to make his way inside, but that was the option available to him. He didn’t have anywhere else to go. Sebastian had wanted to go higher and this was the highest there was. 

He captured as much of the spikes as he could in another shot and then, when they faded away, he could see the apartment as it was, as it had been, all those years ago, back when he had left, back before that. It looked like it had when he was a child, all of the pictures on the walls in perfect alignment, his photographs as well as his father’s although his father was no artist. His photos were of their accomplishments, school projects and music awards. He could hear her music as well, playing softly, the strings of her violin perfectly tuned. 

There was a man, standing in the hall. He wasn’t looking at Stefano. He was standing in the hallway, looking in through the open door into the bathroom, where all of the water and blood spilled out from. He was older than Stefano was, when he had stood in that exact spot, in that same pose, finger itching on the trigger of his camera, wanting but not wanting to savor this, wanting but not wanting to rush in, to stop what was happening. He was an adult, he was the same age as Stefano, all but a year, his suit almost purple from the check of the blue and red. Stefano couldn’t see his face, his dark hair covering the side that was facing him and something else dribbling out from underneath it. He didn’t need to see that face. He knew what this man looked like already. 

He took a step forward, forgetting about the creaky floorboard in the walkway, the one that always gave him away when he snuck in at night too. The man turned, staring at him, and lifted the camera he held, the flash going off in an odd way, not bright enough and lighting up in silence. The square of frozen time that Stefano was able to produce was in the wrong place, capturing the copy instead of what he was photographing, but he flickered and spread like a boka before vanishing. The square was jagged and tilted, the image within smeared along the edges, the vinyette forced by faults in the camera itself, a large blur of red bleeding through the rest of the image. 

Stefano approached it, unsure of what would happen if he entered it but, the moment he touched the side of it it popped, like a bubble, and the world went back to its own idea of normal. He shuddered. He didn’t know what that copy wanted from him, what it intended, or what it was doing. 

He was in front of the bathroom now. He didn’t want to turn. He didn’t want to look. He already knew what was in there. He was here for a reason. He kept moving walking toward the vista, which he knew would be unlocked, would look out over the gardens of their apartment complex and, if he was feeling brave, he could climb up onto the roof, over the trellis his mother had placed there to keep her roses and tomatoes growing upright, and then he’d see all of Florencia. He would not see his home though, he would see Junction. That was what he wanted to see. He needed to see if he could find the police station or Sebastian, from where he was. That was all that mattered. 

He pushed through the double doors, into the bright light of the city, and looked down. Yes, this was Junction, the building alone had been transposed from his mind but he was still here, he was still trapped in the horrible world of STEM and it’s few inhabitants. He looked around, not knowing what the police station would even look like, but knowing what Joseph looked like, at the very least. He had seen a few photographs, the most recent from Juli’s file, of the man, and he would be better to find than the police station anyway. 

It took him altogether too long to see any motion at all and that motion came from a dozen or so beasts, running from the empty lot he had recently left. He could see someone, Sebastian, he was sure, running from them. He couldn't tell much about them, other than that they were far too large and far too many for Sebastian to handle on his own. 

There were knives in the kitchen. Stefano could take a couple, rush back down the stairs, and try to meet back up with Sebastian. Part of him knew that, even if he tried that, the building wouldn’t let him. If it did, there was a very good chance that he would be much too late. 

“Stefano?” came a voice behind him, a young voice, a sad voice. 

He bit his lip. He knew that his hands were shaking. He had been trying so hard to ignore the bathroom and what was inside of it. But that was her voice. That was Gabriella’s voice coming from behind him, as inquisitive as it had been far before she had failed under the stresses of life. 

He didn’t want to turn. He didn’t want to look at her. 

She was standing there, soaking wet, her long black hair dripping over her face, obscuring her features. She was wearing her nightgown, though it clung to her body oddly from how waterlogged it was, and the sleeves were rolled up to reveal the deep gashes she had carved deep with the razor blade. 

“Stefano, why were you looking at me?” she asked, shifting on her feet the way she always did before a recital, before she was meant to go out and perform, “Why did you just stand there, watching? Why didn’t you help me?”

He wanted to answer, he wanted to have an answer, but the truth was that he had none, he didn’t know why he had just stood there and watched as she had bled out, as she still had a few moments left that she could have been saved in. He had stood and watched as she’d stained the porcelain with her blood. He hadn’t even called out to her as she went pale and slowly, so slowly, stopped moving. She had looked at him, right at the end, and for the first time in what must have been a year, she had looked like she was finally able to relax. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking around, looking for some way to escape, “I know I should have been there for you, I should have taken care of you. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t do much for me now, does it?” she asked, lifting up her arms to take a look at the wounds she had carved into herself. 

“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” Stefano realized. The only one an apology would help now was himself. 

“It’s not too bad,” she admitted, a smile in her voice. “I don’t have to practice anymore. I don’t have to be perfect at everything. It’s nice. It’s quiet. You’ll see.”

She took a step toward him and the wounds in her arms opened, not for blood to pour from but for long winding tendrils, like veins, to worm their way out from, to dance in the air of their living room. They reached up to a foot in length and they were all reaching for him as she was walking closer. He swallowed. 

He didn’t want to hurt her. His only option, of course, was that or to let himself die. 

\---

He pulled himself through the window of the car, trying to keep away from the claws of the beasts. He grabbed the handle as fast as he could and pumped it, rolling up the glass panel behind him, pinching the claws of a few of the monsters that were trying to break through, trying to get to him still. 

The car wouldn’t last, but it was something, it was a chance for him to collect his thoughts, at least for a moment. Even though he had done no violence to these creatures, they weren’t forgetting about him, they weren’t getting bored of the chase and wandering off like the Haunted or the Lost had always done. They were either smarter than that or, at least, more motivated. He looked through the car, but there were no keys in the ignition or anywhere else. The car was brand new, not even a candy wrapper on the floor. 

He could hear them scratching at the roof, at the windows. The frame was starting to bend. If he didn’t do something about them soon, he would be crushed under the weight of all this fiberglass. He was fairly certain that being ripped apart by all of them would be a faster way to go. 

He opened the glove compartment. He sighed, tension leaving his system, just for a moment, as he saw the familiar metal inside. It was the only thing in there, that and a few clean and beautiful bullets. 

A handgun. 

He pulled it out, opening the magazine and checking how many shots he had. It was, blessedly, full. He took the few other bullets and put them in a compartment of his holster. He’d been needing a gun for too long, even though so far he’d only been fighting shadows. These things were more of a threat though and he knew he didn’t have enough bullets for all of them but he should have had enough to take at least a few of them down and that would give him more of an opportunity. 

He rolled the window down, just a little bit, and pushed the barrel out through the gap. The motion was enough to draw one of their attentions and it was immediately there, trying to shove its nose in through the gap, fingers digging in and trying to wrench the window down further. It would have better luck breaking the window in half. 

Sebastian adjusted his aim and fired, the bullet shooting out and through the beasts head, up and through it brain. The head burst, almost comically, but it fell and that was what really mattered. 

The sound spooked the rest of them too and they all fell off of the car, a few of the braver ones staying close, trying to blockade him. 

Sebastian opened the door, holding onto it in order to pull it back, to use it as a shield if he had to, as one of these lounged at him. He fired, the bullet going into the things shoulder, but that just made it angry. The next shot missed terribly, but the third caught, ripping through the things eye, tearing it away from the rest of it’s skull, taking out brain and skull with it. 

He could do this. He had a fighting chance. 

He stepped out, firing at the next of them. His aim was better than it had been in Union, he and Stefano had taken a few classes, when their days had become too bland and their memories got too distracting. Mobius was gone, no one was coming after them, but they had still thought it best to at least polish up on their skills. Stefano’s aim, like the rest of him, had always been perfect. It was always the thing Sebastian was worst at, on the field, as much as people liked to assume that he used it as a crutch. 

He took this one down in three shots, emptying the handgun. He didn’t see any others though, that weren’t in the process of running off or backing away. He refilled the gun while he eyed them, keeping the gun raised as a threat. He didn’t know if they were intelligent enough to understand it as one though. 

Teeth dug into his leg and he yowled, the teeth digging in a few inches up from the wound his leg had taken from the bear trap before. He fell to the ground, the creature dragging him, eyes wild, as it pulled him away from the car in the other direction. It had gotten the door open when he was distracted, he hadn’t heard it through the gunfire. His foot almost fit in it’s large mouth. 

“Shit!” he grit out, shoving the magazine back into the gun. He felt like the leg was going to come off at this rate, so many things had been shoved into it. He lowered his gun, aiming it. He had to be careful. If he missed, he could just shoot himself. 

He missed, wildly, the bullet going over the things back. He fixed his aim, holding his breath, trying to ignore the cold fire that was surging through him, the pulse that was beating in his calf. He fired again, this time grazing it, the bullet sliding against its cheek and only getting a small smear of blood. 

One bullet. That was all he had. He was thankful that the rest of them had been scared off, he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t have the skills. He didn’t have the aim. He tried, all the same. 

He squinted. He bit his tongue. He tried to calculate its movements. 

He fired. 

The bullet went between the creature’s eyes and it collapsed, his foot still in its mouth. He collapsed, putting the empty gun in his holster and breathed. He didn’t know if it was dead but most things didn’t live with a bullet in its brain. He was panting. The pain was coming over him in waves. He didn’t know how he was supposed to travel like this, how he was supposed to explore and find Joseph, not to mention the other Cores when his body was such a mess. 

He put a hand to his face. He’d never wanted to come back, had planned to never come back, once Lily was safe. He had told Stefano that he would do everything he could to make sure Stefano was never dragged back into STEM. Stefano had come willingly, for him, and now he was sure that he wasn’t even going to be able to walk, to do anything that he was supposed to do. 

He fumbled for the radio at his hip. He didn’t know who he wanted to call. There was Kidman, but all she could do was try to build an extraction point and pull him out. That would heal him up, sure, but then he’d have to start over, way at the beginning. He could call Stefano, find out where he was, but he had to get control over himself first. The pain was so bad that he could feel it in his lungs and it was so bad, it was worst than the chainsaw he’d taken that one time, it was worse than when Stefano had thrown that knife into his shoulder. It was almost as bad as when he’d been impaled. He could feel his eyes filling up. He didn’t want to talk to Stefano like this, when he was hurting and weak. There was nothing else that he could do though, no other alternatives. 

“Stefano?” he could hear how wrecked his voice was as he called him, adjusting the frequency. “Stefano? Where did you go? Shit. I need you.”

He waited a moment but there was no response. There was nothing from Stefano. He had vanished, somewhere out there, and he had left Sebastian to fend for himself. He knew that he was being selfish to think of it that way, that Stefano was doing this on purpose, but the panic that Stefano couldn’t answer had faded. It all just felt like a betrayal instead. 

He could hear those things out there, wondering if it was safe for them to come back, to finish the job. He had to move. He had to get inside. He rolled onto his side and, from there, up to his feet. He leaned heavily on the car, feeling the pain force his stomach to roll and his thoughts to falter. The ax was still in the car and he grabbed it, strapping it to his back. He didn’t have a way of carrying it and himself at the moment. 

He was close to a building though and he doubted that they’d have any medical supplies, but they’d have something at the very least. He fell against it and pulled himself along the side, unsure if he should get to the door or just throw himself through the window. He couldn’t hurt himself more than he already was, after all. 

He kept close to it until he found a door, after all, and then pushed his way into what must have been Junction’s only tavern. 

\---

She was getting closer. Those tendrils coming off of her looked wicked. He looked one way and then the other, unsure of where to go. He doubted that his camera would work against her. It hadn’t really frozen time much before, it had just removed things that weren’t supposed to be here, in the apartment. She was definitely supposed to be here. This was their home. 

He shouldn’t have been intimidated by a nine year old girl. He knew that. He knew that it was pathetic that he was, but he was terrified. 

“Stefano?” a new voice came from his hip, taking Gabriella’s attention, taking his own. “Stefano, where did you go? Shit. I need you.” That was Sebastian’s voice, as raspy and broken as it was. Stefano had heard him like that before, in his sleep, in the moments after, when his hands searched his chest for a pole that wasn’t there, that had never been shoved through his abdomen. Sebastian was hurting and he was nowhere to be seen. 

He dashed to the right, to his bad side and his leg faltered, threatened to knock him off balance. He let it, forcing his momentum to be more fluid, less predictable, and Gabriella struck out at him, the tendrils like whips sliding above his head as he let himself fall to one knee. He didn’t have a weapon still, he had nothing, but he had a good leg and a trick leg and he was much taller than she was. Even before she’d died he had been faster than she was, his long legs far superior against her stubbier ones. He’d been on the track team, for their mother’s prodding, so he had best have been fast. 

He was making his way to the front door. He could make it. He could beat her there. But then she was screaming and the noise was loud and high pitched, violins ringing into it as a terrible swell, a shrieking upheaval, the bows snapping the chords all bent out of shape. He staggered, his hands clasping his ears. She was coming for him. She was right behind him. 

He bolted for the bathroom instead, slamming and locking the door behind him. The sound cut down immediately as he slid down the door, trying to catch up on his breathing. He couldn’t stay here, not for long, but there was a weapon in here, something small that he could use. And there was someone else. 

“Pathetic, Stefano,” Theodore said, sitting on the edge of the tub, the water and the blood soaking through his robes. His attention was on the pink water, where his fingers were trailing through the elegant blossoms of blood droplets. “Terrified of your past, even though it had been taken from you, at least, the parts that didn’t make you who you are.”

“Shut up!” Stefano hissed, leaving the door to go to the tub, to shove his hands into the water, to splash more of it out and onto himself and onto the ground. There was so much of it, it had been pouring over the sides and the faucet was still running. 

“Your past is what defines you, what makes you strong and unique,” Theodore continued, not shutting up at all. “You shouldn’t hide from it so much, you shouldn’t let it force you down.”

“Shut up!” Stefano repeated. 

“You used to be strong, you used to be powerful, back when you were at my side. You just have to allow yourself that strength once more, to embrace your past instead of cower from it.” Theodore rolled up his sleeves, joining Stefano in searching the stained liquid. “You could be as you once were, an artist, a god, in this small place, this empty canvas.”

Stefano rolled his eye, “You are nothing more than a ghost, I am afraid, and can do nothing. You have no control over me, not now. I am my own man.”

“Are you? Are you really?” Theodore pulled back, holding a straight razor in his hand. “It seems to me that you are terribly under the control of your own fears and past, not to mention one Sebastian Castellanos.”

“You leave him out of this!” Stefano snatched the razor from him. “I am with him of my own volition, not for any need at dominance. I am in control of my own future.”

Theodore just gave him a knowing smile. He didn’t believe him and, since Theodore was dead, that could only mean that Stefano didn’t believe himself. 

He was pulled from his thoughts by a heavy knocking on the door, by Gabriella trying to force her way through and inside. He swore under his breath. He knew that she would be on him soon enough, he’d only wanted some more time. But now he had a weapon, some way to fight back. He didn’t want to fight her though. He didn’t want to hurt his sister. She’d been hurt enough. 

Then the wood buckled and a shard of it broke off and all of his cares were replaced with his need to survive. Other than his past and his passions, he would admit that his need to survive was a very high motivator. He went to the door, his hand on the lock, his other, the handle of the straight razor between two of his working fingers, poised on the doorknob. He breathed. He waited. 

When he felt her thud hard against the door, as more of the wood splintered and started to break, he inhaled. He listened to her pull back. She threw herself forward. He exhaled. 

He opened the door. 

She threw herself past it, her momentum so strong that she went past him and into the side of the tub, twisting and falling into it as she did. She screeched and thrashed, trying to right herself, trying to find her footing, but he was gone, running through the door and slamming it closed once more behind him. 

He made it to the door and through it, slamming it closed as well, making his way back into that white hall with its stairwells and tiles. He ran down them, one hand on the railing to keep him as steady as he could. 

He could hear her bellowing from behind him and ran as fast as he could, which was decent, a good two flights, before his weaknesses overtook him. It was more than he’d ever dreamed he could go while in Union. Still, he wished he could focus his lens on a further floor, zoom in, and then step forward, just be there, instead of relying on his leg. 

He slowed, taking the steps two at a time but at a rate that was half the speed of his running. She was going to catch up to him if he kept moving like this. There was no way that he was going to be able to keep away from her. Perhaps that was for the best. 

There was a chandelier, in the center of the building, long chains hanging down with large orbs of light at the ends. He’d always thought they made the place look overly flamboyant as a child. Now, he needed them. He tried to shove himself down another stairwell, tried to gather his speed, and then he launched himself over the railing. 

He fell, for a good few feet, before his hands were in those chains, hands hurting as he kept sliding down them, his knuckles turned white. He slid, slowly, to a stop, another half story down. His heart was beating in his ears and he wrapped his legs around the hanging décor, taking some of the weight off. 

Gabriella was just standing there, on the side, looking at him. He still hadn’t seen her face. The tendrils wrapped around her arms like vines and, slowly, they budded and opened into roses. 

“Was I really so bad?” she asked, her voice echoing through the building, “Such a disappointment? I always felt, if I wasn’t good enough, they’d all abandon me. You abandoned me too. You’re abandoning me still.”

“No, my darling,” Stefano wanted to reach for her, but she was trying to kill him, and no matter what his heart told him, he had to follow his brain for this one. “No, we wouldn’t have abandoned you. I never wanted to abandon you. I was a child though, I didn’t know what to do.”

“You were my big brother, you were supposed to take care of me!” 

“And I was under the same pressures as you! To be perfect, to be skilled, to be everything that they wanted me to be. I didn’t think I needed to take care of you because you were always so much better than I was! No, Gabriella, you were always so good, so wonderful. I failed you, I never abandoned you.”

The tendrils were covered in spikes, the spikes the thorns of the roses that they had crawled up the side of the apartment building. They were so long. They would reach him. He had no choice but to fall. 

“You didn’t forget me?” she asked, the vines reaching towards him. 

He had. He had forgotten everything. He had forgotten their parents’ names, he had forgotten the name of the building they’d grown up in, he had remembered only the things that had influenced his art. Her blood, the roses, her eyes as she lay there, dying, looking up at him. He had dreamed of it, had savored her death in the forgetting of who it was who had died. 

“I never stopped loving you,” he answered instead, knowing that lying would make her destroy him, that telling her the truth would destroy them both. “I want you to know that.”

The chain snapped and he started to fall.


	5. A Brief Meeting

Sebastian was running through the streets, trying to avoid those canine things. There was one building that was larger than the rest and now it was a massive encroaching thing. It looked like a stomach that had been turned inside out and blown up like a balloon, all veiny and putrid. It swayed oddly in the air. 

It hadn’t been there before, it hadn’t been anywhere. If Stefano was anywhere, it had to be there. He had to get to him. 

But Stefano wasn’t in there. Stefano was standing in the middle of the road, oblivious to the dangers that were wandering the streets, that were after him, that were after both of them if they caught sight of them. 

Stefano was facing away from him, and he was fiddling with something in his hands. He was wearing a purple suit, his shoulders slightly hunched. He was making a noise, a quiet one, right beneath his breath. It sounded like bleeding, if bleeding made a sound at all. 

“Stefano, what are you doing?” he called out, slowing to a walk. He couldn’t shout too much, he couldn’t bear to bring danger to them. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! I thought you’d just abandoned me back there, to deal with that house all alone. Have you seen anything?”

Stefano didn’t respond. His shoulders weren’t just hunched, they were shaking. He looked like he was crying. Sebastian had seen him cry before and it was like this, silent and hidden, as if Stefano thought that his emotions made him weaker somehow. They’d both come so far. 

He took the last few steps between them and put his hand on Stefano’s shoulder. It was like Stefano hadn’t heard him coming, with how badly he flinched and Sebastian realized that he’d grabbed onto Stefano’s blind side by accident. He spun on him, camera raised, and he took a picture before Sebastian could even respond. 

He was frozen. It was just like it was back then, with the emitter, with Obscura, with everything going to hell. He was frozen in time, in the frame that Stefano had focused on, and he was wearing that same suit, that same scarf, those same red gloves. 

He wondered if he had misunderstood. If Stefano wasn’t what he’d seemed. So much had changed since then. There was no way that that had been fake. They’d been through too much. They trusted each other. Rage was pooling in his gut, leeching at his heart. He thought that they had moved on from this. Stefano was walking away from him though, not even looking at him, not monologuing, just leaving him there. 

It wasn’t blue. That was the first thing that he noticed was off. The frame had always had a blue tinge to it. Here it was almost desaturated, though there were spots that were overexposed or underexposed. There was a terrible smear of red down one side. 

Kidman had warned them. They would bring things in with them, they were just as broken as they always had been, they’d just learned how to cope. Without the minds of so many others, they had more control here, and they would bring things whether they wanted to or not. He didn’t know if he’d brought this older rendition of Stefano or if he had. 

The frame broke as the impostor stepped out of it and he was gone. Sebastian could move again. Another frame appeared, about a block away and he could see him in it once more, then again and again. He had to bring up the camera each time he moved. That wasn’t how Stefano moved. That wasn’t how Stefano worked. 

He pulled out his radio. This was getting too weird. “Stefano? Stefano, where are you?” 

Nothing. He’d said that he was in a predicament and Sebastian had been short with him. He’d been in the middle of a fight for his life at the time but that wasn’t enough of an excuse. He had to assume that he was in that strange building. He continued on his way over, finding it to be Junction’s inn. There was a broken window, glass strewn everywhere, and all of the other buildings had been untouched. He stepped through the frame. 

There was someone standing at the counter. He was going through the motions, nothing real, just looping through the movements of menial labor. He couldn’t have been real. He was like Luci outside, an A.I., whatever that was. 

“Did you see a man enter here? Well dressed, a little shorter than me, hair over his right eye?” he asked. He doubted Stefano had signed a ledger. He’d mentioned the need to get up to the highest part of Junction though, to see where the police department was, to see if there were any obstacles in their way. Kidman had assured them that this would be easier, that there would be no people aside from the Cores. The Cores, at least, Amber, seemed to be the problem though. 

The host grumbled and stopped in his actions, looked Sebastian over skeptically. “Oh, new to Junction, stranger? Sorry for my manners, I didn’t notice you come in.”

Sebastian sighed. The response sounded false, like a recording. “Tall white male, shorter than me, dark hair over one eye. You seen him?”

That must have broken through the programmed responses because he stood a little straighter, thought about it for a moment and hen replied with a voice that sounded more like Luci’s than his own, as if she was speaking through his vocal processors. “Yes, a man did come through here matching that description. He did not sign in. He went up stairs, all of the way up. As of this moment though, there are no visitors signed in and, more importantly, one living entity within the Inn.”

Sebastian was about to run up the stairs, to follow after Stefano, when he stopped, starting to understand that. “Wait, when you say one living entity, do you mean me?”

“Yes.” the Host replied, curtly. 

His mind started to race. He should have listened, he should have been faster. When Stefano had said that he was in a predicament, he should have understood that that wasn’t just a figure of speech. He’d been in trouble, just as much as Sebastian had. He should have done something about it. 

“Is he dead?” he asked, trying not to panic, though it was getting up there, his thoughts racing, his heart pounding. He should have done something. He should have been better, faster, more efficient. 

“No,” the Host replied, “he went upstairs and then he left. Life signs increased towards dangerous levels and then vanished. There is something wrong with the system.”

“Shit, yeah, okay,” Sebastian scratched the back of his neck, trying to think, trying to make sense of that. Something was very wrong. He needed answers. “What’s that thing growing outside of the building? That organ looking thing?”

The Host tilted his head the other way, “I am afraid I d not understand your meaning.”

Sebastian sighed. This was all getting a bit too weird. Weirder even than it had been in Union. “Okay, can you direct me to the Police Station.”

At that the Host seemed to brighten up a bit. “I can give proper directions to Mobius operatives and visitors alike! Simply go down the road to your left for four blocks, until you hit Abbey St. and then turn right, going until you hit Karlson Park. Then you’ll hit a few residential streets so you’ll want to go left again on Baker. You get back on Abbey and then turn right on Erin.”

Sebastian tried to memorize it but then the realization struck him. He knew those names. Of course that was where Joseph was. Abbey was his wife, his ex-wife anyway, and Erin was his daughter. She’d been a little bit younger than Lily. He hadn’t seen them for years, even before they’d both been pulled into STEM. Abbey had left him, fallen in love with another man, and moved back up to Canada, taking Erin with her. Joseph had been devastated but he’d kept it close to his chest, he always did. 

“Thanks,” he said and he wondered if it mattered to thank a robot, but it couldn’t hurt. “You mind if I take a look around?” 

“Go ahead officer.”

“I’m not an officer, I’m a detective,” Sebastian corrected and then realized that no, that was wrong, he’d been let go from the force after what happened in Beacon. And he’d never said anything about it. 

“Your badge,” The Host explained by way of apology, nodded at the shining metal that was on Sebastian’s hip. He hadn’t even realized. 

\---

He was falling. He should have landed by now, he was sure of it, but he was still falling and he was screaming as he did so. He was going to land at any moment. He’d seen what happened to people when they landed. He had never been a fan of drop paintings. He didn’t want to become one. 

A voice in his head kept telling him that if he just focused hard enough, could get his footing on something, he could take a step forward, could go somewhere else. He couldn’t though. He was just a person. He didn’t have those abilities anymore. The voice sounded like Theodore’s. 

He wasn’t falling in the apartment building, nor was he falling in the Inn. He was falling through a school, down the hall of it, and gravity was shifting, the entire building turning around him, until his feet could touch the ground, and he was still skidding, still falling, but now it was more like he was being thrown. 

His back slammed against the wall at the end of a hall. It was almost hard enough to knock the wind from him, but not quite. It was enough to knock him forward off of it and he landed on his knees, breathing hard, trying to catch up from his screaming. Slowly, he got to his feet, dusting off the knees of his slacks. He was surrounded by lockers and, in the distance, he could hear the laughter of children, even though he knew that this place was barren. The lockers had some drawings on them, nothing altogether good, but they were the drawings of very small children. At the end of the hall, the opposite end, where there was no entrance for him to have fallen through, was a large clock that read 1:58pm. He had an appointment in two minutes. 

Underneath it was an arrow drawn in bright blue paint. He made his way towards it, rubbing his lower back, wondering how terribly it would bruise. When he turned he saw that it pointed to a slightly open door, Ms Stacey’s class. There was a drawing on it with her name written on it with blue crayon and under it was a drawing of what was either a school bus from the front or a butterfly. He couldn’t actually tell. 

He pushed the door the rest of the way open. It looked like an average classroom, though all of the students desks had been shoved to one side and the teachers desk, in the direct center, in front of the chalk board, had a few chairs sat up around it, all with stuffed animals sitting in them. There were more drawings, large letters and numbers, on the walls, and he was made aware that this was an elementary school, although he’d never seen one with lockers before. 

“My apologies,” came a woman’s voice and he followed it, finding her standing in front of the window. He couldn’t see her face, she was looking out at the garden outside, but he didn’t need to. Today was a day of reunions it seemed and his mouth was dry, his hands sweating at his sides. “I completely forgot to put a location on my invitation. I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important.”

He swallowed a few times. He was fairly certain that, if she hadn’t interrupted, he would be dead. 

“It’s not a problem,” he finally mustered, “it’s a pleasure to be here.”

She had short brown hair that barely reached her jaw and it was pulled back with a red ribbon that worked like a headband. She wore a blue dress that was form fitting for the torso and then puffed out around the hips, going down to her knees. There was a red sash around her waist. Around her neck was a large gaudy necklace and he knew that the stone within it was an emerald. She turned and smiled and he’d never forgotten that smile. 

“You don’t have a hat!” she chuckled. 

He shook his head. He couldn’t move. He could only stand there. None of this was possible. He knew that, and still it seemed improbable. 

She walked up to him and he wanted to run, he wanted to bolt, he had to be gone from there. She had a small box in her hands and she held it out to him. “Here, I said there would be one for you if you didn’t have a hat yourself.” She opened in and, inside, there was a simple silver band with what looked like wax, also silver, coming up from it. A crown. 

He placed it on his head. He wasn’t a hat person, but no one could deny a crown. And she was beaming up at him and she looked just like she always had. Her voice was wrong but her face, every freckle was where it was supposed to be. “Are you-”

“I never introduced myself,” she shook her head, interrupting him. “Sorry, I guess all this time alone has really ruined my manners. You can call me-

“Emily.” he breathed. Of course she was Emily, of course. The location didn’t make any sense, her being here, after all of this time, didn’t make any sense. She was here though and she was breathing and she wasn’t trying to kill him. 

“Yeah, how did you know that?”

That was almost more of a surprise because if she was a part of him, if he had brought her here, then surely she should have known who he was. He hadn’t changed that much in the few years since her death, since he’d found her. Then again, he had changed completely, just not physically. 

“Stefano,” he introduced, sticking out his hand, “Stefano Valentini.”

Her green eyes grew huge and she shrieked, not in terror, not in rage, but in excitement. Her hands clasped in front of her as she hopped on her feet, back and forth. “Oh my God! You’re the photographer! Oh my God! You’re the guy! I tried so many times but it never worked and oh wow, I just. You’re really here! Or are you something I made?”

Stefano brought his hand back, checking his own chest, making sure he was physically present even though he was sure that he was. “Um, yes, I’m real. I came to find the Core of Junction. Why were you trying to make me? I was quite certain that I made you, actually.”

Now she did take his hand and she led him to the teacher’s desk and set him at the head of it. There was a spread of cheese sticks, apple slices, crackers, and earl gray tea on the desk, although all of the plates were of fine china. She sat across from him and both she and her collection of stuffed animals watched him, waiting fro him to serve himself. “Oh right, because I look like Emily! I did a pretty good job of it, didn’t I?”

He nodded, taking a few crackers. He knew how this went, how to do a tea party. He’d only done it with Lily once and then she decided that she didn’t see the appeal of it and that she was too old for such things. Emily, it seemed, was not. 

“I saw her picture in a magazine, in an ad for your gallery show over at the Krimson Met Gallery! I made my parents take me. They had no idea what they were getting into. We didn’t stay long, they didn’t like the pictures, thought that they would be bad for me, but I loved your pictures of Emily. I wanted to grow up to look just like her. My parents weren’t happy with that either. Then there was the fire and now I can look like I want so I look like her.”

He didn’t remember the exhibit. He didn’t remember much of his life in Krimson but, knowing his work, it was probably not something that someone would want to see accompanied by their parents. He knew that his work could be a bit indecent at times, and he had no idea how it had wound up in a magazine. Possibly as an advertisement for the gallery itself. 

“Well, you matched her perfectly. Terrifyingly, in fact.” he swallowed, pouring himself some tea. A large stuffed rabbit pushed a bowl of sugar in his direction. 

She didn’t seem to see what was the problem with that as she beamed at him. All but the mannerisms, the personality, this was Emily. It chilled him. 

“What happened to her?” she asked, pouring tea for all of the stuffed animals around them, before pouring for herself. “All of a sudden I didn’t see her in any of your photos. I looked them up online. All of a sudden she was gone, as if you didn’t want to photograph her anymore. Then you were gone too. Just, all of a sudden.”

He stirred some sugar into his own. This wasn’t a conversation that he wanted to have, especially not with a fan. And he had a fan. That was strange enough on its own, even if she didn’t look so much like someone that he’d lost. There must have been something terribly wrong with her, if she liked his macabre work. The fact that she seemed so young, that she was having a tea party with stuffed animals, was also terribly strange. 

“How old are you?” he asked, not wanting to answer the question.

“Twelve,” she answered, coldly, “and I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Twelve. He remembered the files, the information on the Cores. There was Joseph, who he knew was close to Sebastian’s age, Amber, who was in her twenties, and John, who was twelve. He didn’t want to insult and he was definitely not going to point it out, but this Emily, she must have been John. 

“It doesn’t. I’m afraid that it’s a subject that isn’t quite appropriate for tea, is all.”

The stuffed animals all smiled at him, but they weren’t smiling, the were baring their teeth. The friendly shapes of their faces twisted that into a smile though. They all had teeth, made of cast iron, in their mouths. He suddenly felt much less safe. Emily suddenly looked much larger, more imposing, then she had been. 

“I heard a rumor that you killed her,” Emily stated coldly. “People were talking about it at school, how none of us were allowed to go to the park anymore, because she was found decapitated there. You know what decapitated means? It means her head was gone. Did you kill her?”

Stefano remembered that in terrifying detail. He remembered the police stripping his apartment, of how disgusted they had been at his knives, at his subject matter, at his obsession with death. They hadn’t arrested him but they had made it very clear that they wanted to. He had to go to court. 

“It was not my hand, but technically, her death is my fault,” Stefano explained. 

That was a mistake, though he did not care terribly about her anger. It was deserved. The stuffed animals all went into a frenzy as she coldly sat there, watching him. They were tearing off their fur, revealing terrifying creatures, twisted caricatures of animals, made all of iron. 

“I did not kill her,” Stefano continued, “I did not kill any of my models in the real world. But it was as if I had. For just being in contact with me put them in such danger.”

\---

The building was empty and, when he reached the top of the stairs and opened the door to the next floor he had to pause. He had been here before. He had seen these stairs and these halls. This was the building that he had first entered when he’d been brought to Union. This was where he’d first seen Stefano, seen him murder a man in cold blood, for his art. It was unique enough that he had hoped it was an imagined place, but bland and recognizable enough that he could imagine it really existing. Stefano must have brought it in, just like he must have brought in that copy, though he didn’t know why. Stefano had never had a copy before. 

The biggest change was that the large light that had been hanging in the center of the stairs had broken off, the chain having snapped, and there was now broken glass all over the floor. 

He half expected the phone to ring as he started up the stairs. It didn’t. He wouldn’t pick it up and hear Stefano laugh on the other side, amused at the prospect of him lurking in this space. 

There weren’t plaques on the walls, there weren’t mannequins posed in corners, there weren’t body parts wrapped in loving care and placed around. He kept moving. He doubted that this place was exactly the same. It seemed more benign, in a way. It seemed more real. Stefano was remembering more and more about his past, this place was becoming more concrete. 

The top floor was wet with blood and water, with smeared foot prints. There were two pairs, those of an adult with pointed dress shoes, not enough traction, and those of a child’s, bare footed. He didn’t want to think of what that must have meant. 

The water was still running, still mixing with blood as it puddled out of the door at the very end. The door was left open. He heard a high pitched mechanical sound and then a flash and for a moment he was certain that he would be face to face with Obscura. The hallway beyond the door was dark though, and he could see nothing beyond it. Then the sound came again, as did the flash, and the hallway was illuminated by the flash of a camera, sitting on the floor, facing into a room. 

Sebastian took a step in, hand on the wall to find a light switch, he couldn’t find one. Another flash and he was certain he knew where the camera was, how many steps he had to take to get to it. He didn’t see any danger in there, at least. He took a few steps in, wondering how the camera could still be working as he splashed through all of the pink water. 

He picked it up and wiped it off but it wasn’t flashing now. It wasn’t doing anything. He was left in the dark. He could feel a pressure, all around him, and it was stifling, trying to choke him. He could hear something, like Stefano breathing through a nightmare, all around him. It was a sound he was horribly used to and it didn’t always wake him up like it used to. 

He brought the camera up to his face. He couldn’t tell what he was aiming at but he kept it in the same direction it had been initially sitting in. He took a photo and, when the flash went off, the room stayed lit. It was a bathroom, and the bathtub was still running and, lying in the bathroom, unmoving, was the body of a child. 

Sebastian tossed the camera into the sink as he ran to her, picking her up in his arms and setting her down on the soaking tiles. He put one hand over the other and shoved into her diaphragm, but she hadn’t drowned. There were open wounds in her arms. She’d committed suicide. Sebastian could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He didn’t know this child but that didn’t matter. She couldn’t have been older than Lily was. No one should have to find that, no one should have been driven to that, especially not a child. Her eyes were dead and glassy and blue and she had the same nose as Stefano, the same strong chin. He’d never seen pictures of Stefano as a child but he was certain that he knew who this was. If she wasn’t his sister it was his daughter and Sebastian doubted that Stefano was a father to anyone but Lily. 

He wiped the long dark hair from her face, tried to settle it around her shoulders, and he clasped her hands over her chest. If this was a place from Stefano’s memories, he was sure that she was involved in whatever the predicament was that he’d been in. 

He stood and took up the camera once more. He didn’t know enough about Stefano’s history, but he was sure Stefano was learning about it once more. They had to find each other. Before that though, he went further into the house. 

When he used the flash the light stayed and, in the main space of the apartment he found that all of the furniture had been covered in white cloths, to protect it from dust, but more importantly, the blood. It had been splattered over everything, as if someone had taken a bucket and just tossed it. Family photos, a series of musical instruments, a sculpted bust, a case of trophies, they were all stained indefinitely with red. This wasn’t Stefano’s doing, he knew that. There was no reason for it, it wasn’t even aesthetically pleasing. 

He picked up one of the pictures, framed in a tacky wooden frame and wiped some of the blood from it. It was a picture of a family, arms wrapped around one another, all happy and loving and together. It was almost candid and one of them, a preteen boy with braces and messy dark hair, was blurry, revealing that it had been a timed photo and he’d rushed to be in it after setting it up. There was no question that that was Stefano. His arm was wrapped around his sister, who looked tired but happy. The other two must have been their parents, a stern and fiery woman, her long dark hair pulled tightly away from her face, her smile looking forced, and an exhausted older man with a streak of gray in his hair and small spectacles. They all looked happy, but like there was a lot of work and a lot of stress, just behind it. 

He set the photograph down. He didn’t think now was the right time to be delving into Stefano’s history, as curious as he was. He had to find him, more importantly.   
When he turned though, to head back to the door, he saw that thing, standing in the doorway. The thing that looked like Stefano. His face was once more hidden behind the camera. 

“Shit,” Sebastian growled. 

The copy didn’t move though, it just stood there and darkness seemed to spread out from around it. It wasn’t darkness though, but tendrils, and the body that he was looking at was falling apart, long tentacles of black slime spreading out from its suit and skin. There were eyes, all over it, made of bright blue light, flashing the same way that Stefano’s eye had back when it was a camera lens. 

They were in close quarters and Sebastian didn’t have any ammunition left. He didn’t have any way to defend himself. He also didn’t have a way out, aside from jumping out one of the windows. He was going to have to get through that thing, somehow. 

It took a photograph and the space around it was frozen in a square of off colored, blurred, time. It stepped through it, vanishing, and both it and the square were right in front of Sebastian, crowding him. The tentacles wavered for a moment, and then they were after him. He swore under his breath and swung. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t what he needed to do, but swinging the camera as if it were a weapon was all that he could think of. 

\---

It wasn’t a school. He’d thought that it was but it wasn’t. Schools weren’t mazes. This one was. He was racing along corridors, all of which looked the same, the same lockers with the same drawings on them, over and over and over again. He wasn’t keeping to the left, he was mixing it up, he knew that he wasn’t going in circles. 

He could hear the tapping of the creatures’ feet against the linoleum. He couldn’t run much faster, much longer, his leg kept threatening to collapse. He kept close to a wall, hand out to push himself off of it when he started to list, when he needed extra support. 

The animals looked like they had been sculpted, like a blacksmith had pounded enough old nails into the right forms. They were still the right size to be stuffed animals, but that didn’t stop them from being utterly terrifying, and the grooves in his calves and ankles, the bleeding bite marks, attested to how sharp their teeth still were. 

He should have thought through his answer better. 

There were no doors, nowhere that he could escape into. He had to just keep going through the halls, kept having to turn. He didn’t have time to even break one of the windows and escape out into the courtyard. He didn’t. He couldn’t have. He didn’t have powers. 

He caught sight of himself in the window, his reflection, and there was a light reflecting from the wrong side of his face. He didn’t know what it was reflecting off of, but it left a bright blue flash over his socket. 

“Why are you denying yourself?” a voice asked him, deep in his mind, right behind his right shoulder, it wasn’t Theodore’s voice. It was someone elses, a combination of his own, Theodore’s, and Paolo’s. It made him feel sick. “They’re going to catch you. You’ll be killed if you don’t take whatever advantage you can.”

He pulled out his camera. It had it’s own powers, at least, it had when he was in the apartment. It raised it up, ready to turn and take a photo, but when he turned he tripped on his own ankle and he slid, falling, calling out as he landed without grace or any way to stop himself, his hands too full to reach out and catch himself. 

The twisted creatures were upon him in an instant and there was nothing the he could do as they bit into him, their teeth short but sharp. He cried out as they sank into him, as their claws raked him, as they tried to pull him under their heavy bodies. There was nothing that he could do aside from lash out, kick at them, try to keep them away. They didn’t care. He just hurt himself more trying to struggle. 

“Grab onto my hand!” a voice ordered and the he could see the hand, like an angel’s hand, bright gold and glowing, like there was fire just under the skin. He had no choice. “I will make you strong again, just grab onto me!” 

He did. He reached out. 

The skin felt like fire and it consumed him as he was dragged out, the flames spreading down his torn shirt sleeve, setting his nerves off and then extinguishing them. Smoke filled his lungs when he tried to cry out, the burning taking away his breath. But beyond that, sinking through the agony of being burned alive, as the large shape of glowing death, like the sun in human form, dragged him away, was the feeling of his skull cracking open. 

It felt like a jagged break and then there was something inside of it being shoved forward, upwards and out through his empty socket. It smoldered into being, long lines brushing over his nose and forehead, down his cheek and throat. It was marking him. And then he could see. 

He wasn’t being dragged by an angel, he was being dragged by a man, who was slight and hunched over and dressed well but had been for far too long. His shirt was untucked and stained with sweat and his waistcoat was undone. His sleeves were rolled up and there was a mass of scar tissue down each of them, thin and white and bright through the smear of blood. 

The world spun and Stefano found himself thrown over the man’s shoulder, and they were running, moving faster than Stefano had ever expected, faster than Sebastian could run, that was certain and he’d taken up jogging recently. The man was saying something, but Stefano couldn’t hear him, not with how his head still felt like it was splitting. 

He caught a glimpse of the iron creatures, still chasing after them. They weren’t keeping up as well as they had been, couldn’t keep with the turns as well, but they wouldn’t tire, not like this person who was carrying Stefano away. They would get them eventually. 

Unless he did something. 

He tried to focus, but his head hurt so much and as they rounded a corner he whimpered, everything too blurry. He could hardly see through the crack in his head. He grit his teeth, tried again, focused on the first of them. And then there was a burst of red, like a blood splatter of light, and the hall froze behind them. 

Then it all faded to black.


	6. Becoming What We've Always Been

He smashed the camera into the duplicates face but it didn’t matter, the thing that looked so much like Stefano was already stumbling, falling to the side, and the attack made it fall over as the momentum added to it. It wasn’t still on the floor, it was writhing, the way that Stefano sometimes did in his sleep, when the pain in his head was too much to keep quiet. Its hands were on its face as well and, sometimes, a bit of fiery yellow light shot out through the gaps between fingers. 

Sebastian dropped to his knees, knowing that he shouldn’t care, that he should use this moment to escape or to kill it, but it was in so much agony that he couldn’t imagine just leaving it. It looked like Stefano. That must have been one of the reasons that he couldn’t stop himself from reaching down, from taking one gloved hand in his own, and wrenching it away from its face. 

Its skin was melting, dripping away from the socket where its eye should have been, long red wires twisting through it like veins. When Stefano had used the eye it glowed blue but here, it looked like a fire had started in the socket and was bursting upward, trying to find purchase. 

Its hand was gripping Sebastian’s, cold and tight, needy. It was staring at Sebastian with its other eye, the one that was dripping tears, that it was having a hard time keeping open. Its eyebrows were knotted, and its mouth was pulled back to reveal all of those grit teeth. 

“Please...” it begged, its voice strained and quiet under so much pain, “Seb.ast.ian. Please… hurts.”

The voice was Stefano’s as well and his heart tightened, squeezing itself in his chest. He squeezed the doubles hand in response, unsure of what to do. He had thought this was Stefano at first but it couldn’t have been. Stefano didn’t act like this. Stefano wouldn’t hurt him, not again, not after they’d gotten so far together. This thing hadn’t hurt him either, but it looked like it was going to. He wondered how much he’d misunderstood. 

“I know,” he nodded, “I know. Can I do anything?”

Its back arched and the fire spread, sparking and rising high into the air, catching its hair ablaze as well as the bone under the skin, because the skin was melting off as if it were plastic, revealing the white underneath. Sebastian tried to pull away, the instinct to escape the fire enough to turn off all other functions but it was clinging to him, its other hand grabbing onto his elbow. It was screaming and the sound was like static being forced through a megaphone, mixed with an electric shock. 

The flames caught in its suit and spread down its chest, over its arms. Sebastian shoved his foot into its side and kicked it away, the leather saving his skin as he pulled himself free. The thing was crying out for him between screams, but the words were in broken Italian. Sebastian threw his hands over his ears as he pulled himself across the floor, watching as it spasmed and thrashed, the tendrils that had split from its body slamming onto the ground around it as they curled in pain. 

The entire place was going to burn, the fire was going to spread, and Sebastian was going to be trapped once more. He pushed himself to his feet, heading towards the hall past the burning copy. The smell was like burning plastic and it made his head hurt. His head hurt and his nose itched and there was smoke in his eyes. He reached up to wipe his nose and the back of his sleeve came away bloody. His head hurt worse. 

That wasn’t supposed to be there. 

He staggered, feeling claws against his brain, digging into him, red coming over his vision. He tried to shake it away, tried to ignore it, and ran towards the door as the flames spread, taking over the last remnants of the screaming copy's body before it finally went quiet. 

There was a knife inbedded in the wood of the door, stabbed through a red stained shirt, originally all white aside from a red symbol over the heart, almost a cross in a circle. It was a symbol he knew all too well. Above it were two words, written in dripping blood. 

“Still here.”

He threw the door open and himself through it, only pausing a moment to rip the knife out from the wood. It had a curved blade, terribly wicked, and there was just a ring instead of a hilt to it. It was meant to go around his finger, to slit through delicate tendons. It wasn’t his style. He didn’t have time to think about it though, he couldn’t be too picky about what weaponry he had. 

He thought that the fire was going to be the problem, but it wasn’t following him out of the apartment. As he raced as best he could down the halls, skidding before racing down the stairs, he could feel the building falling around him, encroaching, collapsing. It had looked solid enough from the inside, but from the outside, it had been a large organic thing. Now it appeared like a heavily detailed and multifaceted balloon, and it had popped. 

The building was billowing around him, the steps less real and he slipped and stumbled. He allowed himself to slip, to ride out on the momentum, directing his decent with the railing and his determination. He shouldn’t have been able to run that fast but with how the building sagged beneath him, as it tried to buck him off, he rode out the momentum, allowed it to carry him all of the way down until the building ended and the other building began. 

He ran into it, breathing on the stairs, his hands on his knees. He could relax, for the moment, he could catch up on his breath. He didn’t even hear the collapse of the apartment behind him now. 

\---

“No!” came a voice, exasperated and angry, but angry in the way that someone could be mad at a dog, a bit of tenderness still in the notes. “No, no, no, get out!” 

Stefano cracked open his eye. It was dark as night, a bit of light coming from something, not the stars because he was sure they were still outside, but that light was too much for his aching head. He closed his eye. He felt like he was going underwater, but the surface of it was made of needles and they scratched and jabbed at his head as he bobbed. 

“Please, Sebastian, I need you out there.”

\---

The host of the hotel didn’t bother to ask him any questions as he made it the rest of the way down the stairs, though he was polite enough to wave as Sebastian took the door instead of the window. The road was blessedly still in the night, though he could hear those whimpering sounds in the distance. There were more of those monsters, waiting for him. He didn’t think he could fight them all off with the small knife he’d found. He was going to need some ammo. 

He knew the way now, knew where he had to go to find the police station and, hopefully, Joseph. The road was twisting beneath him, though he hadn’t noticed it by how subtle it was, but it was terribly curved up ahead. He could see a few figures on it as well, waiting for him. They looked human, but they shook oddly, and some of them were pacing, but most where just standing still, as if they weren’t real. He didn’t know who they were but now he knew that there were monsters in here. He wasn’t safe. Neither was Stefano. 

He’d barely taken a single step when his radio came to life. He picked it up, pressed the button, and breathed. 

“Finally,” Kidman grimaced from the other side, “There you are. I was wondering if you’d already lost your radio or something.”

“Kidman? This place is a nightmare! There are all sorts of monsters and things are all out of whack. Nothing makes sense!”

“Monsters? How’s that even possible? Who in there would even want to make any?”

“The writer, Amber, for one,” Sebastian kept walking, heading towards the odd people that were hanging upside down there. “She’s made these awful things, like dog people, and there’s something else, more human, that I haven’t had to deal with. She thinks this whole place is just for her benefit, for her to test story ideas out in, and none of them are romantic in the least.”

“And Stefano?” she changed the subject, oddly, as if what horrors Sebastian was seeing came secondary. It was off putting, to say the least. 

“There’s something in here, something like him, but isn’t him. I don’t know what it was or even if it’s still alive.” 

“How is he?” her voice was a bit quieter. Sebastian felt uncomfortable with how quiet she was being.

“We got separated. I don’t know.”

There was a long pause. Sebastian licked his lips. He didn’t know why Kidman’s hesitation was so terrible when everything else in here was so much worse. There was something that she had to tell him. 

“He had a seizure, in the tub, a few minutes ago. There was some sort of flare up, all of his vitals spiked,” Kidman said it calmly, slowly, calculating every word. “He’s fine, now, but it was worrisome.”

Sebastian’s heart was loud in his ears, he was walking faster. His free hand was in a fist. “Shit! You have any idea what might of caused it?”

He could practically hear Kidman shake her head, “I don’t know, not for certain, but I have heard reports of it before. It was common, really common, in the instance of stem that Ruvik was the Core of.” another pause. “Sebastian, I think he might be haunted.”

\---

He shook his head, trying to rattle the pain out of it. It didn’t work, it never worked. He put his hand up to his face, covering his eye, felt something hard protruding from it, pushing out through the lid. It hadn’t poked through the skin but it was stretching it, making it hard to keep it closed. The pressure felt a little bit better, at least. 

He realized that the room he was in was a bedroom, a small one, with brightly colored wallpaper. He was on the floor, his back against the bed, which had a pink duvet on it, covered in dragons. There was an art desk, low to the floor, much like the one that Lily had, and there was a few toys, one similar to the dolls that Lily had of her parents, but this one had black hair and a black vest, and glasses. 

Joseph. He’d only seen a few photos of him but he was sure that that was who this was. 

He rolled his neck, his head resting on the side of the bed. It hurt too much to move. He could hear the floorboards creaking beneath him like nails being driven into the bald spot behind his ears. 

“Hello?” he called out but his voice was weak and wavering. He doubted that anyone could hear him from where he was. His mouth was so dry. 

He heard a door slam closed. 

His head felt like it was being drilled through. 

He closed his eye.

He thought he heard his name. 

\---

Stefano wasn’t answering. Sebastian was sweating, jogging towards the police station. There was no way for him to know where Stefano was, his last lead had been all wrong or, at least, a bit too late. There was something happening, something big. It wasn’t just Stefano either. His headache was back and there were times in which he had to stop in order to keep from falling, to lean on a nearby building to cough. There was no blood coming up but he knew that it would if this kept going. He’s seen this before. 

He never thought it would happen again. 

He drew close enough to see the figures better, recognized them as long and lean men and women, dressed in an odd old fashioned manner. He didn’t have to get any closer, he didn’t have to see the barbed wire wrapped around them or the glass that was growing out of their skin to recognize them as the haunted. That meant Joseph really was here, or that there was still some echo of Ruvik within STEM. Sebastian bet it was the former, that Joseph was doing this, even if it wasn’t intentional. 

They hadn’t noticed him yet. He closed his eyes, willing his itching throat to not start another coughing fit. He looked up, just for a moment, before nausea hit him and he turned his eyes to the ground. He was on that part of the road that had twisted and now he and the haunted were standing, upside down, on it. He didn’t know who or what had caused that to occur, but it made him feel wrong and shaky. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the sick feeling. 

He’d found a few bullets on the way, a couple of boxes stashed under cars and in planters, a good 3 of them on the porch to a barbershop. He had eighteen shots, more than enough to get rid of a couple of Haunted. There would be more than a couple though and firing at them would draw the attention of more. 

The whimpering was quiet though, far away. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with those dog things. 

Sebastian darted behind a car, trying again with his radio. Stefano would have to respond to him eventually. “Stefano? Stefano, are you there?”

“What the fuck is this?” came a voice on the other side, deep and guttural, almost two voices at once. There was some odd tilt to it, something familiar, but through the static and the other buzzes of the radio, he couldn’t be sure. It sounded like that false Joseph that he’d fought before and he froze, wondering if Amber had him, if she was affecting him the same way she had Sebastian. She had no reason to, Stefano’s stories would undoubtedly suit her better than his own. 

Then there was a terrible crunching sound coming through the speaker, a high pitched screech that Sebastian had to snap the radio away from his ear for, and silence. It was all mechanical sounding, plastic and metal scraping and snapping, and then an electrical pitch. He didn’t know what it meant, but it felt wrong and final, and he kept trying to button, trying to make contact once more, but there was no response. 

Sebastian had to move. He pulled himself out from his hiding spot and heard the groan immediately, turning and firing at the haunted that was pointing at him, drawing the attention of the others. First hit landed and burst its head into an ooze. It was too late though, the others already knew where he was and they were charging him. He could see more up the road too. There had to be more than seventeen and there was no way he’d get them all in one shot each. 

He grit his teeth. He needed his partner here. 

\---

His wrists itched and they were bound and, as he struggled, he felt something pierce into the skin. They weren’t wire ties or handcuffs. He could see the metal slowly snake around his waist, a living vine of barbs. One of the tendril slipped around his thigh, almost lovingly, though he knew it would cut if he moved wrong. 

“Don’t worry about that,” came a voice, sturdy and kind but also tired. He turned to the man sitting before him, in one of the chairs that was far too short for an adult. He was dressed well, at one point, in black slacks and a black vest, but it was all crumpled and half torn. His shirt was no longer white and some of the buttons had been ripped off, making it so there was a wide expanse of pale skin on display. He had on black leather gloves and they were wrapped firmly on the base of an ax. “Answer my questions and I’ll remove it, one way or another.”

Stefano stiffened, looking at the condition of the man’s skin. There was beauty in pale skin and blood and this man had those in droves, but his skin was raw and sliced through, scarred and then torn through again. Almost the entire right side of his face looked like it had been clawed through, and it was down his arms and chest and neck as well. His nose, chin, and left cheek were the least damaged of him. 

“Joseph?” Stefano struggled to get the words out. 

The man leaned forward, squinting from behind his glasses. “And how would you know that? You’re not one of Amber’s, are you?”

Stefano shook his head, too much, causing the pain in his head to flare. “I was sent in here to find you. You understand STEM, do you not?”

“STEM?” the man looked confused. He lifted a hand and scratched at the side of his face, reopening some of the wounds. The pads of his gloves were worn, or more accurately scratched, through. “I know about the fields of study, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

“This place,” Stefano started to explain but the words were jumbled in his head, the pain in his eye too much to think around. “it’s like a dream world, where a lot of minds are connected. It was created by Ru-

“Ruvik.” Joseph interrupted. “I know that. And I know this is a dream. I just can’t wake up from it.” His hand scraped down his jaw, leaving puss and blood in its wake. “But you’re not one of those Mobius people. I haven’t seen one of them in a long time.”

“They,” Stefano swallowed. He felt like he was going to be sick from how much his head hurt, “You wouldn’t happen to have something for a migraine would you? I can hardly think.”

Joseph shook his head. “If I did I would have gone through them all in a day, I’m sure.”

“I see. They’re dead. All of them. That’s why no one’s come in so long. But we… are you all right?”

Joseph was doubled over, his ax forgotten in his lap as he scratched at his skin. His back was quaking as he coughed and shook. He was leaning forward enough for his blood to drip onto the floor. 

“Joseph?”

\---

The Haunted weren’t difficult to dispatch but there were far too many of them. Sebastian found himself lucky though, lines of barbed wire stretching across the roads, some of the cars and street lamps engulfed in them, bombs attached to motion detectors that he could shoot when enough of them drew near to it, trip wires and bear traps. It was like Beacon all over again. He didn’t know why they were suddenly there. Why the haunted were already there, but he was glad that he knew how to avoid them. 

He was still pretty clawed up and chewed and bruised by the time that he got through them all. He had two bullet left. He’d tried to use the knife but it was useless in his hands. 

Sebastian put his hands on his knees, panting. The sound of whimpering was closer. He wasn’t surprised that he’d drawn the attention of those things. He had to keep going. 

He was almost there, judging by the street signs. He’d get there soon enough. He started to walk, his legs tired, the arches of his feet aching. He wanted to rest. He couldn’t though, he had to keep going. He tried to call Stefano again, but there was no response, as per usual. 

In the distance he could see a sign, just barely sticking up over the roofs of the other buildings. Junction City Police Department. He started to walk faster. 

A heavy wind started to pick up, rolling around him. Sebastian pulled his head down, stayed behind the cars. It felt like the wind was trying to pull him away. 

“What now?” he groaned but the wind took his words away from his gritted teeth and he didn’t even hear them. He kept moving, keeping close to buildings, but it seemed that the wind didn’t care about the buildings at all. Nothing was stopping it as it pelted him. 

The wind wasn’t alone though, it also carried sheets of paper. Some of them were crumpled into balls but most of them were full and flat, dancing in a panicked seizure as they were shoved through. They were all covered in writing, but Sebastian wasn’t about to reach out and grab any of them. He kept moving, some of them slicing through his skin as they flew past, and he rolled down his sleeves and brought up his arms to protect his face. 

He was getting there. He was so close. 

Soon it was impossible to see through the gap between his arms, there was so much paper. It was like looking through a blizzard. There was too much of it. There were no gaps between them anymore. 

But there was something hard. The wind hadn’t stopped but it was halted by this impenetrable surface. The papers weren’t as violent here either. He put his hand against it, sliding it out all of the way, and then the other, opening his eyes and noting that it was a massive wall, blocking off his path. 

There was writing on it, which didn’t surprise him in the least, and it read “Tests, Allies, Enemies”. He didn’t like that. He didn’t know what it meant, but he didn’t like it at all. There was an arrow coming from it, pointing down at a door which was outlined in black scribbles. 

The doorknob looked drawn on. He turned it and opened the door to darkness. 

\---

The barbed wire around his wrists tightened as it branched, the vine around his thigh digging in and growing into three. More of them were crawling around his stomach, up his chest. Stefano barely paid them any attention, not with how terribly his head hurt, and definitely not with Joseph in front of him. 

The blood streaming from Joseph had grown substantially and pustules grew out of his many wounds, white tipped and full. They stretched over so much of him. 

“Are you alright?” Stefano asked, barely able to hear himself over his own agony. He was trying to put this man before himself, it’s what Sebastian would have done. They were here for Joseph, acting out Sebastian’s will would be for the best. 

“Oh, I’m fine!” Joseph chuckled, his voice doubled and wrapped around itself. He pulled himself up out of the tiny chair. His Irises had turned a pale gold, the veins in his eyes having burst to surround them in blood. “In fact, I’m feeling more myself than I have in a while!” 

His hands were tight on the ax. His face was twisted, his smile a terrible crack through it. 

“That’s good, would you mind terribly putting the ax down? We could go back to chatting, just the two of us.”

“Sure, sounds good!” He joyfully exclaimed and rushed forward, slamming the ax down. Stefano rolled out of the way, drawing blood as the barbed wire wrapped tighter around him, as it was crushed against his body. He didn’t expect that to work, but he’d had to try. 

Like this he couldn’t fight, couldn’t do much of anything. He had rolled forward, between Joseph’s legs. He spun around, on his back, and kicked out at the back of one of Joseph’s knees. It was nothing, just a surprise, but it knocked Joseph over for a moment, gave him a chance to get up to his feet. 

There was something dark on the carpet, next to Joseph’s foot. It was a pile of plastic, still mostly in the shape of the radio that Stefano had strapped to his hip. Had had strapped to his hip anyway. He chanced a look down, noted that it was no longer there. It had been destroyed. 

He couldn’t find Sebastian now, couldn’t even ask Juli for help. He was alone with this thing that was supposed to be Joseph. He was Joseph, he had to be in there. Stefano knew what it was like to be possessed by something so much stronger than himself, something that was nothing more than power. They were the same. 

Joseph swung wildly, running towards him. Stefano tried to dodge but there were barbs in his leg, traveling down towards his foot, traveling to his other leg, tangling them. The first strike missed, the second tore through his left arm, just an inch, and then Stefano fell, tripping over the tiny chair. It meant that the next of Joseph’s strikes missed his chest. 

He slammed against the fllor, the carpet not enough of a cushion for his fragile head. The pain in his eye fractured, his skull shattering in fire and blood. Everything went red.

He could hear music.


	7. Familiar and New Faces

The door opened to a poorly lit church, the stained glass too dirty for the sun to stream through. It had been dusk when he’d entered but the little bit of light that came through showed that it was the middle of the day. Time didn’t work here, not the way that it was supposed to. He took a step inside, shivering as he recognized the space. 

The pews were a mess, the chandelier was swinging slightly, and there was a large white statue of an angel behind the altar. There was someone talking, consoling someone else, far away, under the bricks. Sebastian rested his hand on one of the pews, a pew where a man had once sat, begging for understanding, wanting so badly to die. Sebastian couldn’t allow Joseph death though, not back then. He never could. Even when he had seen it happen, he hadn’t been able to accept it. 

He was half expecting a figure in white to be standing behind him, for gravity to stop working, for him to be thrown into the nightmare of Beacon instead of the one of Junction. 

“You’re an interesting one.” The voice was feminine, honest, and Sebastian turned with his hand on his gun. Amber was standing at the altar, reading over something, barely giving Sebastian any mind. “Normally I don’t put so much of myself into the backstories of my characters, but with you, it just seems to have happened. Why is that?”

“Backstory?” Sebastian shook his head. “No, this never happened to me, not really.”

“Just in your head, same as Joseph. I think maybe I’m combining him with my own memories, making something new. No wonder you like him.”

“Where is he?” Sebastian tried not to growl. 

“Hiding. He’s always hiding. He’s no fun. I think I like you more, he’s always been more of a side character anyway.”

He wanted to ask her why she was doing this, why she thought that he wasn’t real. He put his gun down but not away. He could hear whimpering. He knew this place. 

“Why are we here?”

She gestured at their surroundings. “This? Oh it’s the supposed half way mark in the heroes journey. Tests, allies, and enemies. I don’t know if I’d call it half though, it’s very much the longest one.”

Sebastian shook his head, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She shrugged, “Don’t worry about it. You’re just here to make it through the plot. I’m here to see how it goes, to write it all down. I think you’re supposed to be running though.”

He cocked his head. She took a step to the side, revealing a hole in the floor behind her, among the feet of the angel. The sound of those dog things were louder, closer. He could feel a prickling up his spine. 

The wind started to pick up, the chandelier swinging more wildly. There was a thudding against the door. They were trying to get in. Sebastian grit his teeth, running towards Amber. He’d almost reached her when the wind tore her apart, into a million fluttering pages, and she split around him, the papers slicing into him as he ran through. 

The doors came open and the whimpering grew in excitement. It didn’t matter. He was diving into the hole, into the darkness beneath the church. 

\---

It was an absolutely dreadful thing, the way that the flesh had split, the way that the scars had made such beautifully pale skin abhorrent, and the blisters and pus just made it all the worse. Joseph could have been such wonderful medium at one point, could have been made into such pleasing shapes, and it wouldn’t have taken much. Even from here, as he had been reduced, Stefano could tell that he had once had such a magnificent form that he wouldn’t of had to do much sculpting. 

As it was he wouldn’t even be salvageable for basic materials. 

It was not easy for Stefano to twirl out of the range of the ax, but he joined Joseph in his laughter all the same. He pulled himself to his feet as gracefully as he could, his thighs loosely bound in the barbed wire. Joseph started to rush him but that too was easily avoided. Truly the man was clumsy, wild yet predictable, and Stefano would have disposed of him effortlessly if only he had his hands and his knife available to him. 

“This would be easier if you stopped squirming!” Joseph cackled. 

“I do not squirm,” Stefano corrected with a small smile, “though for you I may be coerced into dancing.”

Joseph’s smile spread. His gums were red and inflamed. “Been a while since I got to dance with a man of any skill. Mind taking it easy on me?”

Stefano grounded himself, looked over Joseph’s shoulder, and took a step forward, entering the space behind him. He could hear the ruined lungs gasp as he slid his thigh against the blade of the ax, slicing himself free. “I do not understand what you mean by easy, I am afraid.”

“You have some tricks up your sleeve.”

“Would you like to see them?”

Joseph spun, bringing the ax through the space that Stefano had just been in as he stepped forward again, back into the space he’d been in previously. 

Joseph chuckled, “You’re cheating.”

Stefano smiled. “I haven’t even started to show off yet.”

Joseph started to race towards him once more and Stefano readied himself to shift out of the way but then Joseph threw out his arm, changing projectory. It took him by surprise, broke his focus, and he was being tackled, shoved against and then threw the window, and he was falling. His eyes were wide, looking up at Joseph, as he fell to the yard below, the shards of glass like the jagged edges of a chandelier around him. 

\---

He landed hard against a slope, too steep for him to keep his footing on, too wet with blood, and he was falling, riding it like a slide, pushing himself from one side to the other to escape the refuse. It was piles of gore, saw blades, grinders and machinery and bones, meat still hanging off the edges. There wasn’t a dry spot around. He was picking up speed, realizing that the last time he’d done this his leg had been sawed through and now there was no pain. He hadn’t noticed that the wound in his leg had stitched up over time, that the pain had faded. He couldn’t think of that though, not when the slide was ending and he was being projected into a vat of blood and viscera. 

He pulled himself up, wiping the blood from his face with bloody hands, and looked around. He was at the base of a hospital, further down than a hospital would go, in a room that didn’t belong. He kept his nose shut, his mouth too, to keep the stench out as he waded through the hip deep red. There was a ladder up one side and he climbed it, pulling himself out and over the side, up to a pair of pale grimy feet, bare, against the steel floor. 

“Leslie?” he asked, but the young man was already shuffling out, going through a door and away. Sebastian tried to wipe himself down further but it wasn’t possible, there was too much.

He couldn’t be there. He couldn’t exist. Sebastian followed him, through the door and into a long stretch of hall, with white walls and a smooth cement floor. That was Leslie though, too far away for how long he’d been out of view, his shoulders hunched and his steps short. The floor shifted and shuddered as Sebastian headed towards him. 

“Shit. This place is going to collapse!” Sebastian growled, picking up the pace. 

Leslie waited for him at the door though and this time, when he got close, the floor didn’t break and he wasn’t wrenched away. He was able to make it to Leslie before he turned and opened the door, entering a space of complete darkness and sound. It was the sound of people, women primarily, screaming, sobbing, and wailing, and there were saws and drills and all manner of other machinery going off, all played over a very familiar tune. It was a tune that still gave Sebastian nightmares, a tune that Stefano had tried to play and found that the attempt took him out of his head and made him shake. 

“Leslie?” Sebastian called out, stepping into the room as he reached for his flashlight. He didn’t have a flashlight though. He had a lantern attached at his hip.

The light revealed the floor to be pure white with hard edged stripes of blood on it. The stripes were familiar. The screams were familiar. The red curtains were familiar. 

“Leslie?” Sebastian called out again. He heard a yelp and then another yelp, quieter, and he moved deeper into the room. The yelp continued, echoing, and then he saw the boy, standing in the center of the room, a figure before him, blocking half of Sebastian’s view of him. The man’s back was broad and clad in a navy jacket, small checkers of a lighter purple against it. “You again.” Sebastian sneered. 

The double turned, offered Sebastian a half smile. His face was still a mess of dribbling ooze, his skin looking wrong and plastic. His hands were on Leslie’s face, cradling him softly, even as a small rivulet of blood dribbled down his cheek. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re not Stefano,” Sebastian stepped forward, drawing his gun. “That’s for sure. What do you want with him?”

At that the double smiled and he sounded so much like Stefano, acted so much like him, that Sebastian wasn’t so sure. “Look at this skin, this beautiful color, this mind which is open and ready to be filled! Why, this flesh is ready to be more, so much so, and a master could mold it into such promising shapes, create such majesty!”

“Don’t touch him,” Sebastian took another step forward. 

The copy did as instructed, turning to Sebastian even as that smile slowly faded. Leslie, released, ran to hide behind Sebastian, cowering behind him. “I intended you to be my masterpiece, did I not? For you to be the culmination of my skill and prowess?”

Sebastian slapped his hand away. “You’re not him. You do know that.”

The copy just shrugged, “Not in all ways no, but I am in the ways that matter. I can aid you, Sebastian, like I did before, or I could work against you. It is-” he stopped suddenly, his face twisted, his remaining eye searching the walls as if he could see through them. “He’s hurt.”

Sebastian’s face fell and he crowded the double. “What are you talking about?”

“H-he’s hurt,” his voice changed suddenly, weak and raspy, the same way that it had been when he was in so much pain. He covered his eye, trying to step back and stumbling, shaking his head. “He’s. Coming. Fall. He fell and. It was him. That. Man.”

Sebastian took a step towards him, lowering his gun, ignoring how Leslie grabbed onto him. “Who? Stefano?”

The double looked so perplexed, so small suddenly. “Stef.an.o. Hurt. That man is a mons.ter. They both. mo.nsters.”

“Sebastian?” Leslie’s hand was on his shoulder. Sebastian would think that he sounded scared but he always sounded a bit scared. “Go? We have to go. Go.”

\---

He landed on his back, his arm twisted oddly, glass embedded in him. He sputtered for a few moments before oxygen came back into his crumpled lungs, and the pain faded away as the other pain came rushing back. The glass in his skin burned and itched and there were cold spots where it had been pressed deeper into his skin, but it was minor compared to the pain in his head, in his eye. 

He looked up, seeing the monster that had tossed him out of the window. The strange texture, the inhuman nature of his eyes, were still there. Stefano wondered if Joseph remembered, when he came back to himself. Stefano knew that he did, although it was like he was another person. 

Another person. He’d fallen, gone back to what he had been in Union. He’d been so worried about that. And he’d gone back to it so easily. 

He pulled himself to the side, the glass twinkling like chimes as it fell off of him, and then pulled himself to his feet. He was still bound, still useless, even with his powers. He could move though, staggeringly, and he was sure that he was quite a beautiful mess, his eye wild, something new growing through one socket, his hair wild, and blood dripping down the side of his face, a large gash in his eyelid from the inside. 

He focused, through the pain, across the street, and stepped forward. Even he could tell that there was something wrong, something hot in the way that he moved. 

He took a look back, finding that he wasn’t in front of a house but the police station, where Sebastian was trying to find his way. There was a tower behind it though, a lighthouse tower, that was wrapped almost completely in barbed wire. It was almost as if they were brambles, a thicket of blackberry vines or rose bushes, but they were far too thick, too strong, and they were pulling the lighthouse down beneath it. 

Then there was a flash of light and Stefano turned away, the pain in his head spreading, and when he looked back there was no lighthouse, just a police station with a second story, one of which had a broken window. 

He started to move, to flash down the street, walking feeling like too much work. He had gotten better at walking, even without his cane, but he still felt weak and, right then with so much glass in him and so much pain, he couldn’t be bothered with it. Each time made him feel a few temperatures hotter though and soon he was slick with sweat, resting against a wall, and panting. 

He couldn’t rest long. He couldn’t waste anymore time. Sebastian was out there, somewhere. 

But closer than that was a horrible whining, the sound of beaten dogs that had been given human lungs and mouths and Stefano’s ears pricked, all of his pain being pushed to the side. It was distant enough, he didn’t have to worry about it quite yet. It wasn’t as close as the much quieter sound of heavy iron clicking against the cement. 

Stefano looked around, not knowing where the sound was coming from. He knew that they had escaped the school, that Emily’s friends hadn’t caught up to them, but now they were patrolling the streets. Stefano was certain that he saw one as he walked halfway past an alley before stepping forward and out of sight. 

They were catching up to him and he wasn’t getting anywhere closer to Sebastian. He didn’t even know where to start looking. 

There was a shrill squeal as metal was dragged against the cement and Stefano turned sharply to the right to see one of those things, what may have once been in the shape of a teddy bear, drawing the attention of the others. The sound was loud and it reverberated in his head but not enough to drown out the sound of the ones further out. They knew where he was. They were coming for him. 

He started to run, to step forward and ignore how his body burned with it. He felt feverish, delirious, and he was falling more than he was running, projecting himself further with it. The sounds were getting louder and he could hardly do anything against them. He turned, seeing one of them bearing down on him, only to trip himself in the process and fall to the side, breaking the glass that was still in him if it didn’t break apart. 

He tried to drag himself up, tried to get to his feet, but his arms were still bound, the muscles in his shoulders aching from the strain of being landed on so many times. He kicked out with his feet, tried to drag himself along the ground, his heartbeat loud and matching their terrible steps. They were surrounding him, giving him no way to escape. He felt like he would combust if he were to try to use his eye, to freeze them all in place, to stop time for a moment. 

Black bubbled around him, like thick pools of ink, before they shot up into the air, writing words. Words upon words, so many of them and it was like a wall of black fire. Stefano felt his throat tighten, and he lungs, as the wall solidified into a thick dark mass, keeping out any intruders. Any except for the woman who created them. She appeared as a white shadow, writing the wall as she sat on the floor, facing away from him. When she was done she stood, wiping down her white dress, looking more real than when she’d started. 

“You look like you’re in the thick of it,” she smiled at him from behind her pale hair and her large glasses. 

“I think I would prefer the thin,” Stefano panted, rolling until he could get onto his knees. “You’re Amber, aren’t you?”

She crossed her arms, “I’ve already run into one person who claimed to know me today. Who are you?”

Stefano smiled. There was only one person she could have meant. “I am Stefano Valentini,” he introduced, “I am -

“Great so he made you again,” she rolled her eyes interrupting. “I guess that answers my question f where you came from. Don’t worry, you’ll stop existing soon. Still, I can’t imagine what you’ve done to upset him so terribly.”

“Him?” Stefano asked, the hope that she might be helpful starting to fade. He’d at least hoped that she would unbind him. “Who do you mean, him?”

“John. Or whatever he’s calling himself these days.”

“You mean Emily?” Stefano could feel an emotion, something strange and foreign starting to build in his throat. It felt like when lily had told him that her classmate, Riley, had been teasing her. He didn’t know what to do it so he elected to ignore it. “You are mistaken. She did not create me. I was not expecting to find her here, or anyone else who knew my name, but I assure you I am a real person. If I was something that she created why would those things be after me?”

“He,” she emphasized the word. Stefano elected to ignore her. “I know of your work, I know how you work. I think, yes, I think we could work together Stefano. We have similar goals, after all.”

She walked up behind him, taking his wrists in her hands. They felt raw, terrible, and he wanted to tear himself away from her. He couldn’t see her, not from this angle, and he could hear her, but all he could picture was a man behind him, a man who was dead and that Stefano had never regretted the death of. 

“We are both creators who want to create great masterpieces, right? But the rest of the world, they don’t seem to appreciate us. That’s why I came in here, to hone my craft, to make certain it was perfect so no one out there could think to criticize it.”

Stefano felt hot and clammy. He hoped that she was taking the barbed wire off. Deep down though, he felt cold. He knew what she was going to say next. 

“I think we could come to some sort of arrangement.”


	8. We Make Our Own Demons

Sebastian couldn’t just leave him there. Even if he was a broken and nonsense version of Stefano, Sebastian couldn’t just leave him. Even though Leslie, or the memory of him, was there, leading Sebastian through the halls of a mansion that Sebastian was sure that he recognized, over layed over the space that Stefano had made himself and the padded cells of Beacon, he kept an arm on the double, a hand rough on his arm to drag him along. He was quiet and nervous, but he seemed to know what was going on with Stefano at least, and Sebastian couldn’t contact him so this was the best proxy he had. 

Leslie seemed to know exactly where they were going, where they needed to go, but with every new door he was further away. There was a question nagging at Sebastian, a big pit in his gut of a question he should have asked years ago. He waited until the next doorway, when Leslie was out of hearing range if he spoke softly enough, to pull out his radio. 

“Kidman, you there?” 

The double was itching at his wrists, where thin white scars still littered. He pulled off his gloves so that he could scratch at them better. 

“Of course, Sebastian,” Kidman sounded grim on the other end of the line, “What’s going on?”

“This is going to sound really out of place but I need to know, what happened to Leslie?”

There was a long pause and a bit of a grumble and Leslie was saying something but Sebastian couldn’t hear him from where he was. He let go of the double to wave him off. 

“It’s curious, Mobius is usually really good at keeping track of people, especially those that have been in STEM but Leslie, well, he woke up and just left. He left before the rest of us even got into the building to secure those still within. After that, he vanished. There’s been a few sightings of someone who looked like Leslie and he was apprehended a few times, but his fingerprints didn’t match, they seemed to have been twisted into another shape or were half way into becoming a different pattern, and his intellect and personality was vastly different.”

The Leslie at the end of the hall was shifting his weight from foot to foot, apparently very agitated and impatient. 

“But you can confirm that he’s out of STEM? Him and Ruvik?”

“Sebastian, what are you seeing?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“He’s not there. If you’re seeing him, he’s a projection of your own mind. You have to remember that.”

“He’s leading me somewhere.”

“If you follow him, there’s a really good chance he’s just going to lead you into your own traumas. You can end up spiraling.”

The copy was staring at Leslie though, the scratching of his wrists stopping now that the skin was red and inflamed. His attention went to Sebastian and Sebastian stared harder at Leslie, drawing a bit closer. There was something wrong with his face, to the way his eyebrows were pinched, to the way that his skin was sloughing off. His hands were at his ears, and the skin was coming off of him like long dried patches. 

“Sebastian?” Kidman asked. 

“I’ll talk to you later, there’s something going on.”

“Don’t trust him! He’s not real.”

“I got it.” He put the radio back on his belt and got closer. It didn’t matter if he trusted this Leslie or not, he had to know what was going on. He had to get through this area and closer to the police station. It was his only hope of getting to Joseph. 

The skin coming off of Leslie had been obscuring old scars, the twisted knots of burned flesh. His hair was falling out as well, displaying more of the scars and worse, a glass dome that protected the exposed brain. He was crying out, falling to his knees as he rocked, the voice cracking and breaking between his own and that terrible monstrous sound that had come from the monster that Sebastian had destroyed in Beacon, the one that had Ruvik in its mouth. 

Sebastian was getting close, closer, as the sound got louder. The pair of them were screaming, more of the monster, less of Leslie, but then there was another sound amidst the others. It was a high pitched sound, like tinnitus, and it dug deep into Sebastian’s skull, He grit his teeth, stopping mid step, to clutch at his head. He could feel it, something terrible, something buried, trying to dig it’s way out. 

“Sebastian?” Another voice, Kidman’s voice, came from his radio. “Sebastian, you need to settle down. There’s something wrong!” 

Sebastian couldn’t do anything, the pain in his head was too great, too overpowering, and the sound drowned out all else. 

There was a hand on his shoulder and he turned but his vision was red blurred. He didn’t know what he was seeing. It looked like Stefano but it wasn’t it couldn’t have been, it was the fake. And there was a rage inside of him, his emotions going too fast for him to understand them. He could barely contain whatever it was that was in his head. 

And this thing, it was frightened, that was good. It should have been. Sebastian’s hands were on it’s neck and it was pulling back, trying to get away from him. He could feel a pulse under his hands, something living, something squirming. Everything was dark and thrumming and filling that hole inside of him, the one that he hadn’t noticed open and wanting, waiting for so long. The fear fueled, him, made him feel something he hadn’t in so long. The fake was trying to break his hold, was grabbing at his arms, his hands, trying to pry them off. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t anything. It was just a mockery, a tool. He could destroy it so easily. 

Nails dug into his cheeks but he could hardly feel them. All he could feel was the thundering pulse, growing louder and louder as the copy flailed against him. Then there was a sharp pain, stronger than what had been in his head, down at his side, by his hip. He fell off of his victim and the double fell away from him, hands red even without the leather. 

\---

Her fingers were delicate in his bonds, helping him out of them, untwisting them, unsnaring them, and he could hear her grumble as she slid parts of the barbs out of his skin. 

“What do you want?” Stefano asked. She’d mentioned a deal, but she hadn’t continued from there. 

“I want to write. I want to come up with the best plot of them all, and I want to test it. I can see your story, you know, there are some beautiful elements in it. I think you’d make an excellent antagonist for my hero.” 

Stefano’s mouth was dry though, his tongue darting out to try to promote saliva production. “Your hero? I don’t want to assume but his name, he wouldn’t be Sebastian?”

Her hand landed hard on his shoulder, an attack, a direction. She was going to flip him around and push him against a wall and his head was starting to pulse, his urge to run at the forefront of his mind, and she was going to put her fingers into his eye and try to make sense of it. But she was just holding him there, a clasp on the shoulder as if filled with pride. “

“So you know him? I should have guessed. He thinks he’s his own person and that explains why your backstories are intertwined so well.” 

Stefano was confused. He craned his neck to keep an eye on her. “Then you know I won’t hurt him, not again.”

He cried out as her hand went back to the barbed wire, as her fingers knotted in them and pulled tight. He could feel the spikes slice into him, could feel his back arch as he tried to squirm away from those terrible rusted teeth. The blood was soothing as it poured, hot and thick from the fresh cuts to dribble down his fingers. 

“Stefano,” she said, her voice just as calm as before, “being a bad guy is in your nature. You can feel it, can’t you? In your head? That urge to do something terrible, to draw out terror, to make something beautiful out of it? Don’t you want to create something fantastic?” she brought her lips close to his ear, “When’s the last time you made something for yourself?”

Stefano shook his head. He wanted to get away from her, from all of this. He wondered if she knew that, if she knew why they were there in the first place. “We’re trying to get you out of here, out of STEM. Do you know what STEM is?”

She rolled her eyes. “Again with this? Yes, I know we’re in a shared dream and that we’re the Cores or whatever you want to call it. That doesn’t matter. It’s helping me get some of the best ideas I’ve ever had. I don’t care that it’s only in here, it’s still in my head. I’m going to be the biggest thing once I’ve got it all planned out. Sebastian is going to be my masterpiece.”

He threw his head back then, surprising her as his skull crashed against her own. Sebastian wasn’t going to be anyone’s masterpiece, no one but his own. Stefano had marked him, all that time ago, and the mark had faded but it was still there. He was an artist and Sebastian was to be the most beautiful piece of work he’d ever work on. But it was a work in progress, his sculpting was slow, methodical, love in each stroke. At first it had been a sculpture of gore and blood, set to be in the view of any lucky enough to be granted an audience, but now he would be a sculpture of flesh and smiles, of true joy as the traumas caused to him faded away to hairline cracks. He wouldn’t allow anyone to use Sebastian in any other way. 

He turned on his heel, finding her clutching her nose as blood streamed down it. At least he’d done something then, even if it was just a break. She was furious and hurt though and the white silhouette was also turning red at the edges, words appearing in her skin like many layered tattoos, too many of them, words written over words, and they weren’t ink, they were cuts, opening on her flesh. 

“I was willing to play nice with you Stefano,” Amber growled, tearing her hand away from the blood on her face, the drops standing still on the air, spinning, turning into something else, growing into bright and fast shapes, something like a cherub made of blood and teeth and intestines. “I wanted us to work together, a nice little collaboration. You didn’t have to fight me on this!”

He took a step back. Whatever she was doing, it was taking up quiet a bit of energy, because the walls of ink surrounding them were starting to fade away, to break down. He still couldn’t get out from between them but he was getting close to it. She just needed a bit more rage. He was afraid though that whatever she was making was going to be more of a problem than the walls were. 

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll work with me, whether or not you get anything out of it. I’ve already got it outlined. I think you’ll get to understand why authors are known for torturing their characters first though. It seems the only way.”

He grit his teeth. The cherub like things were all long sinew wrapped around gore, trying to keep it contained, trying to keep it all together. They had faces but they were all muscle and bones, no skin on top of them and they looked like they had been made by grabbing and twisting the cords out of the main mass. They were legless and wingless but they bobbed in the air as if they had any reason to, and they had long skinny limbs, one of which ended in a long shard of sharpened bone. 

He took a glance at the wall. He could see through it. There were those dog things, with human faces, but he could see past them. He focused and took a step forward, out of the cage she had made, away from her strange beasts. 

Without his hands balance was hard though and his knee buckled, making him slide against the wall of a nearby building before he was able to pull himself up to his feet once more. He didn’t know where he was going, but he had to get away from Amber. He had to find Sebastian. 

\---

Blood on the floor. Blood on his hands, as he stumbled and pulled the knife out of his guts. Blood on his tongue and his chin and seeping down his nose. He fell to his knee. His head was pounding and with each pulse there was more blood pushing out of him. And there was a sound, a woman’s voice, calling out to him. 

“Sebastian? Sebastian are you alright? Sebastian?” 

“Myra?” Sebastian groaned, hands trembling, fumbling, trying to grab the radio at his side, failing a few times, before he got it and brought it to his face. “Hello?”

Not Myra, Kidman, of course. Myra was dead. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten that. “Sebastian! Thank God! What’s going on?”

Sebastian looked around. He was alone, sitting on the floor. The door ahead of him was open, revealing a long white corridor but where he was was covered in rust and chain link. He didn’t recognize where he was. It matched the room he had been in but everything had been replaced with decayed metal. 

“I don’t know. Kidman. There’s something wrong. Something really really wrong.” he could tell that his voice was weak. He leaned back against the wall. All of him was weak. 

“You’re telling me! Sebastian, you had a seizure, your vitals went crazy, and you started hemorrhaging! There’s blood everywhere. I’m calling this off. Both of you are having some strange reactions, and I am not a doctor.”

“No!” Sebastian grappled the wall, pulling himself up to his feet. “No, Kidman, you can’t. We survived this before. You said yourself that this was seen in patients during the Beacon event! And. Shit. It was the same as then. I saw red and I attacked someone. It was just like when you shot me.”

“You’re haunted too? Shit.” He could practically hear Kidman shake her head. “This is a mess. Are you sure you don’t want me to pull you out of there? Just for a little bit?”

“Don’t you need my coordinates for that?”

“You don’t know where you are?”

“No idea. One of the cores, Amber, she’s pulled me into this weird trial of some kind. And Leslie, no, that wasn’t Leslie, not at the end, Ruvik’s here. Something about the Heroes Journey?”

“I’ll look into it,” Kidman promised. “Sebastian, Ruvik isn’t in there. His brain was disconnected and destroyed. You killed it before we even got there. Whatever it is that you saw? That came from you.”

“Yeah, I know, but in here that doesn’t mean he’s any less powerful.”

“True. Tell me if you ever need a break, okay? I can wake you up.”

Sebastian put the radio back on his belt. He felt weak, terrible, the pain in his side a strong ambient pulse. That thing, the copy of Stefano, had stabbed him. He couldn’t say that he didn’t deserve it. It was a real knife though, a proper one, even if it had the same ridiculous curves and over the top design that Stefano’s knife had. He could use this. 

He had to move though. He had to keep going. He pushed up off of the wall and towards the corridor. It was clean and well lit and Sebastian was staining it, leaning against the door frame and coughing up blood. He had a headache and it was like a deep and warm pool. Part of him wanted to dive into it. Part of him wanted to turn again. 

His blood wasn’t the only blood in the corridor. There was a long smear of it, as if someone had been dragged along the floor. He followed the trail with his eyes before his feet, finding a body dumped in the corner, next to the door. The body was too bloody, too wrecked to be fully recognizable, but there was the shape of a suit and bits of purple still showing through the cracked open body. He pulled himself forward, approaching it. There was no way that the copy could be alive, not with wounds like that, not if they had been created by Ruvik. Even in here Ruvik could kill someone with a single touch. He could probably do so easier than ever before. 

Sebastian picked up the pace a bit, making his way towards the door, towards the body that he’d never hoped to see so utterly destroyed, even though he knew that it wasn’t real, that this wasn’t really Stefano. He’d seen this body die before. He didn’t know what it was in his subconscious that wanted to show him Stefano dying so many times. There was something so terribly wrong with it. 

The body, the remains of the body anyway, was still breathing when he drew close. The chest was moving in jilted choppy movements and Sebastian did what he could to get there faster. The lungs were half exposed, the skin around them blackened and turned to coal, all of the bones shattered. His insides were exposed, his remaining cheek broken open and there were teeth protruding out from the skull. His arms were at his sides, broken into awkward positions, hands curled, fingers all in different directions. Only his legs seemed hole. 

“Sev.” He rattled, his head falling to the side so that he could look at Sebastian. Sebastian fell to his knees once more, trying to figure out where he could touch him, where he couldn’t hurt him. “Sev.ashum...”

“I’m here,” Sebastian promised. “I’m here.”

“Pock.it. Fr’u,” the sound was little more than a rattle. Sebastian didn’t know how he was still alive but he wouldn’t be for long.

Sebastian went for the pocket on the copies jacket, “Bress” leading him to look in the pocket that had been near the double’s heart. Inside of it were two syringes, ones that he recognized. Sebastian stared at them for a moment, then at the copy. He immediately went for the man’s sleeve, starting to roll it up, ignoring how he flinched and spasmed. 

“No! No. Not. fr’me. Seba.shun. I-”

“I attacked you,” Sebastian growled, pressing the point into the double’s veins and pushing the plunger. “If it weren’t for me you’d be okay. If it weren’t for me none of this would have happened.”

“Not. Real,” his head was lolling about as the medicine started to heal his wounds, the ribs slowly curling back into black, the bleeding slowing to a trickle. There was no way that it was going to heal him, no way to repair all of that damage, but he’d at least die in less pain. “M’not real.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Stabbed you.”

“It’s something that people that look like Stefano do. Don’t worry, it won’t be long now.” 

The copy’s hand was working a little bit better because he reached out and clutched at Sebastian’s shoulder, the knuckles popping back into place against his arm. “He doesn’t know. He. Doesn’t. Know. He’s com.ing but. But he doesn’t. She’s trying. To turn. Im agains you.”

“I’ll deal with him, don’t you worry about that.”

The copy watched him as he slid the syringe into his own arm, as he healed the wound in his side. Sebastian sat by him all the while and, by the time his own wound was healed, the double was gone. 

\---

He was tripping over his ankles, stepping forward, righting himself, and then tripping again. These things, these bloody orbs of bone and organ, were faster than they appeared, and they were changing. They were rotting as they moved, their intestines stretching and tearing and becoming long masses of webbing, which they grabbed onto the walls with and pushed themselves forward by. Odd appendages were forming and deforming, as if life cycles were happening, as if they were evolving into the best shape to get him. 

Stefano turned corners, tried to get away, stumbling and sliding. He had to get to Sebastian. With the rate that these things were changing, there was no where that he could hide though, if he want under a car they would turn into sludge, if he hid in one of the buildings they were grow hands in order to pry their way inside. 

There were people. He could see them, standing on the road. They were upside down. The road was upside down. He stepped forward, again and again, his head thrumming, darkness encroaching on his vision, but still he moved. He didn’t know who they were. He hoped that they were people, or at least, V.I.s, that they could help or get in the way of his pursuers. 

They were not people. They were human shaped but they were like the lost, their minds completely eroded. They did not have the long and thin bodies of those that had starved into nothingness when they realized that the food that they ate was not real, nor the white blotches and blisters. They were more red, more torn, broken glass and barbed wire and rust and blades and all manner of horrors embedded in their skin. There was no elegance in them, no beauty. 

The first of them roared, pointing, when he drew near, then got confused as he vanished and appeared somewhere else, correcting its aim. The others followed suit. They wouldn’t be helping him. They were after him. They weren’t good at running, they weren’t good at moving, but they were relatively quick on their feet considering. They were doing better on them than Stefano was. 

He heard the squelching of flesh but not the concern of death as the ever changing orbs, much less orb-like now, caught up to the mass. They were tearing through the obstacles too fast. Stefano had been hoping they’d give him a few minutes at the minimum. Now it seemed like he’d gain seconds at most. 

Not that it mattered. There was nowhere for him to go. There was a white wall in front of him, blocking off the street. It was made out of paper and rebar and there was no way that he could get through it because, even though it was paper it felt like cement against his skin. Upon it was written four words “Tests, allies, and enemies”. He observed it for a moment, trying to understand it, the point of it, but then the monsters were upon him, humanoid and organic alike. 

He took a step forward, then another, into an alley, into the street on the other side, into the impossible stretch of yards and houses that couldn’t have been there because the whole city was twisting and buckling. He could hardly see through the spots in his eyes, could barely feel the earth beneath his feet from the cracking of his skull. He wanted to dive into it, his body smaller than the crack itself, where it was cool and calm and there were waves of power that filled him. That version of him didn’t need to run. 

This version couldn’t afford to. 

He stumbled, his leg finally giving out on him even with how much he’d teleported, crashing to the ground. He tried to get up, to push himself forward, but the pain in his head and his wrists was just as much a deterrent as his exhaustion. He couldn’t even get up, not with how his wrists were still bound and bleeding. He had to get up. There was too much at stake. 

The monsters were upon him, so many of them, and he knew that he could stop them, that he could use his eye, that hard sharp thing that was protruding from the socket but he also knew that he would be lost if he did. He was so close to being lost all the same. He could feel it, the power, pulsing right under his veins, ready to take him over. There would be so much less pain if he just fell into it, if he allowed himself to become what he once had been. He wanted it. 

He kicked out, knocking what could have been a man in a porcelain mask, away from him. There was a woman with him, wearing the same one. He didn’t know what the point was of the masks, but they made him feel uneasy all the same. He kicked them away when they drew near, kicked at the ground when they weren’t trying to drag himself along the ground. He could feel the fabric of his sleeves tear against the asphalt. He had to get away. He had to find Sebastian. He didn’t know what else to do. 

Sebastian would know what to do. Sebastian would be proud of him for finding Joseph. Sebastian wouldn’t hate him for failing and taking on the power that he’d needed to survive so far. He had to find him. 

His shoulder hit a leg and he flinched but there were no hands, no knives or farming tools, coming down to stab into him. The masses of tissue burst into large tendrils and shards of bones, making webs of organic weaponry that cut through and ruined all of the other monsters, then stayed there, another barricade, another way that he couldn’t escape. 

He looked up, finding Amber just standing there, the blood coming from her nose now dried and brown. She hadn’t bothered to wipe it away. 

“Even though you tried not to, you still went to where he’d been,” Amber smiled. “I’d almost say it was like love, the way you try to protect him. But I can see it, just under the surface, how easy it would be to make you turn against him.”

Stefano tried to argue, but his throat was too dry, his tongue fat and useless in his mouth. He could hardly see her through the haze of darkness that was trying to swallow him up. He wouldn’t fight Sebastian. He wouldn’t. He’d sooner die. 

Someone was bending down and his hands were on Stefano’s jaw, holding him in place. His eyes were on him, boring into him, studying the damage in his face. His thumb swept Stefano’s hair away from his eye, exposing it and that thumb would be entering it. He was on his back and he was writhing and there was nothing that he could say. 

Paolo was dead. He’d killed Paolo himself. What he was seeing was just his imagination. 

There was a burst of pain and he was drowning in the darkness.


	9. Red Coming Through

Sebastian stood up, all of his aches and pains rolled off of him like a heavy wool blanket. He felt refreshed, he felt ready. He knew that he wasn’t. There was something written on the door, a piece of paper written in Amber’s quick and simple hand. He had seen it enough to recognize it by now. It was another cryptic phrase, another line of nothing, “Approach to the Innermost Cave.”

He put his hand to the door and opened it finding the space on the other side to be a library, much like the one that had been rotting in the Victoriano Estate, though the lights were gold instead of cold blue, and there was no grime, no death, no damage. The desk was cleaned off, just one single book on it, and there were other chairs, all facing it. It looked like there must have been a reading here, but that didn’t make sense. Sebastian didn’t know how Amber was connected to the Victorianos, but it made him uncomfortable all the same. 

There was a flicker and Leslie was standing at the desk, but another glitch and it was Ruvik, leafing through the book. Sebastian took his gun, aimed it at Ruvik, and slowly approached. 

“You don’t belong here,” he explained, “You’re just in my head.”

Ruvik shrugged, not looking away from the book. When he spoke it was in that same voice, the one that had plagued so many of Sebastian’s nightmares. “In yours and in his. You don’t think I came here only for you, did you?”

“You mean Joseph,” Sebastian grit his teeth, taking another step. 

“He is still under my control, after all this time.” Ruvik raised his head, finally, a small smile to his lips. He still wasn’t looking at Sebastian. “Though I am his as well, it seems. This may not be my world, but I am still a part of it, and it does lead back to me. It all leads back to me.”

Sebastian had questions, a lot of questions, and all of his time trying to find Mobius, trying to find answers, had just led him in circles, confused him further. He wanted Ruvik to answer the questions that he had but he knew that anything that he got out of the man would be answers to questions that he already had or would just be cryptic. But if Ruvik was telling the truth, if he was a creation of Joseph’s he may know things about this instance of STEM. 

“Where is he?” 

“Home. Or what he has built to be his home. I would call it more of a prison. Perhaps if you were to look at it with the right set of eyes you’d see it as it really is.”

Cryptic, of course. That made no sense to him and he wasn’t about to ask for any sort of clarification, not from him. 

“And Amber?” 

Ruvik pointed down the hall, not moving from where he stood. He was just as distant, just as lifeless and cold as he’d ever been. “She’s waiting for you and she’s running around out there, like a rabid dog after that artist of yours. He’s going to be quite troublesome for you.”

“Stefano? Shit.” Sebastian bit back a longer list of curses. He should have suspected, he should have known. Amber was obsessed with her vision, with the inspiration for her work. She and Stefano had a lot in common and if he was really Haunted like Juli had suspected that was going to be a big issue. Stefano didn’t even know what Haunting was though. Sebastian wondered more if he had fallen to what he had feared so terribly, to being Lost. 

“You are unarmed, or, at least, close enough to it.” Ruvik moved suddenly, on a breeze, until he was standing in front of Sebastian, close enough that he could smell him, like formaldehyde and smoke. He looked more broken than the last time Sebastian had seen him, more unhinged, and there were dark red bruises, like rug burns, on his throat and chest, the size of fingerprints in places where the burns didn’t mar him. “You put so much into destroying me, not knowing that I wasn’t your true enemy. I wonder if you’ll do better this time.”

His skin blossomed into open wounds, blood running down his skin in thin rivulets. He held out his hands, easily catching the bullets that pushed out from them, backwards, each one a shot from Sebastian’s guns, that had never done anything against Ruvik. The bullet were whole and unspent and there were so many of them that Sebastian would be able to take down an elephant by the time the wounds were empty, closing up once more, and Ruvik was dropping the bullets into the pouches on Sebastian’s belt, in his holster. Sebastian’s mouth was dry as Ruvik maneuvered him, laid him heavy with ammunition, and prepared him for the battle ahead. It was wrong, they were enemies. 

“Don’t think too hard on it, Seb,” Ruvik instructed, closing the clasps tightly once more, “Amber has been as much a pest to us as she has you. It would do us all well for her to be disposed of.”

“I came to get the Cores out, all of them, not kill them.”

“If she’s dead, she’ll be out and it’s not like you really have a choice here.” Ruvik put two fingers to Sebastian’s temples and fear shuddered through him, muscles locking because he knew what Ruvik could do with that cold touch. Pain came from it as well, the trembling tinnitus that made Sebastian cough and taste blood. “If you’re too pathetic to deal with her, I’ll do it myself, though it will still be the gun in your hands.”

He took a step back and then fizzled out of existence, just a puff of smoke in his wake. Even the pain in Sebastian’s head had left along with him. He went down the hall, to a set of red double doors that had no place in the Victoriano Estate, which had a small metal placard on the side. There were small statues, looking far too real for Sebastian’s tastes, on either side of the doors, which had blood red roses growing from the pots in their pale arms. 

“Ordeal” is what the placard read. He checked his gun, made sure it was fully loaded, and pushed on both of them, opening them to reveal a theatre, with a long path down between rows and rows of chairs, all red velvet, ready for an audience. There was no need to wait for a performer. Stefano was standing on the stage, his hands as red as the gloves that he used to wear, his head down, his purple suit rumpled and put on in a hurried fashion. 

He didn’t look like himself. He looked like a puppet, the strings lax. Sebastian looked hard at him as he traveled down the path, but there was nothing wrong with his face, not like the double. This looked like the real thing though there was something terribly wrong. 

\---

Chair upon chair, all filled, all waiting, all watching him. Those sitting in the seats were all identical in dress, in movement, in the bags that sat on their heads. They weren’t real, a part of him knew that, but the larger part of himself knew that they were his medium, that this room was his canvas, and the man walking down the aisle, gun in his hand was his audience. 

The spotlight came on and he was there, hands at his sides, his skin flaking with his own dried blood, wire digging and cutting into his skin. It didn’t matter. Not with what he was doing, he had a plan in mind, a masterpiece. It was walking towards him, already so beautifully sculpted. It just needed a few more pushes and the magnificent splatter of blood. 

“The chase has been entertaining,” he said, “but even the greatest entertainments must come to an end.” The words fit so beautifully in his mouth, they felt as if they were his own. The man in the audience looked confused, eyes on him with something akin of hope. If it was hope for mercy, Stefano would give him none. 

“Stefano? What are you doing here?”

“I commend you for making it this far. If perseverance were an art form, you would be a master. Perhaps not a Michelangelo, but a Van Gogh at the very least.” He tilted his head, smirking. The man looked so small from where he stood. Everything did. Like they were tiny little models for him to paint, like they were dolls to be poised, like they were so many insects. They were all so beneath him. 

“Come on, Stefano! We’ve been through this before, you don’t have to be like this!” The look on his face, worry. The man’s name, Sebastian. He knew this man, had fought him, had loved him, had been so close to him. Stefano didn’t want to hurt him. His body didn’t feel like his own anymore. It felt like he belonged to the audience, like creating was all that he was. “Come back to me, please!”

“You stopped me before,” he said calmly, turning on his heel, taking a step to the side. “You aimed to control me, sculpt me into something I am not. But I am more than you could ever handle, I am more than just a man. Once I realized the extent of my power, how could I allow myself to be anything less?” Another step. “What I’m doing is more important than mere personal gain. I doubt you could ever understand this.”

“You’re right, I can’t,” the man was at the edge of the stage now, setting down the gun to climb onto it. Foolish really, when there were stairs just a few yards away. “Because I know you and this isn’t you.”

“It doesn’t matter. You won’t be around much longer.” He raised a hand. He looked at the paper thin mockery of people, the cheap materials, laid out before him. They didn’t matter, they weren’t real. He was meant to create a masterpiece with it all but they were not of good enough quality to be anything other than a mockery. A shock piece, nothing more. “My work however, will continue. Picasso had his blue period, I have entered my crimson period.”

He closed his hand and a flare burst from his socket, yellow light filling the room as each body before him tore apart into a mass of blood, paper, and fire. The light from his eye filled the room, slowing everything down until it was almost impossible to tell that there was any movement at all, and what did move quickly reverted to start again. 

He couldn’t help but step from side to side, arms swinging wildly, almost dancing as the blood and flames billowed out, threatening but not eating at the papers that fluttered, the bodies coming back into their original forms for a moment. Only one seat was free of the loop, of the blood, and that negative space brought the piece together in a way that brought the piece to another level. It was a question, it was a hole in the soul. 

Sebastian looked away from him, at the splendor around them and he looked appalled, terrified, which filled Stefano with an urge, something dark and carnal. He already wanted to make something out of Sebastian but now the feeling was intimate, close and heady. 

“Beautiful! A bouquet of flame and blood!” he remarked, almost stepping off of the stage in order to view his work in another angle. 

“This isn’t real!” Sebastian was screaming at him, pulling him back, making him pay attention to the man as he resumed climbing up onto the stage. “Stefano! Snap out of it!”

“How will I ever top this? I’ll find a way.” But the answer was staring him right in the face, had climbed onto the stage by now, and had quite the assortment of knives on him. 

Stefano took a step forward, onto the other side of Sebastian, and slipped the longer of the knives from it’s holster on his side. He could smell the man’s sweat and blood, as well as his aftershave and more than a hint of smoke. Sebastian hadn’t had time to react yet, not before Stefano had dragged the blade up, just enough to catch in his brown vest and slice it open. He ran his nose across the back of Sebastian’s neck, considering biting into his flesh hard enough to draw blood. 

“Your death will be art,” he decided, stepping before Sebastian once more, drawing his camera and pointing at him with the knife. “It’s time to put a signature on it.” Another step and Sebastian was looking for him, weak and pathetic on the stage, looking for his death. 

\---

He wasn’t Haunted, not like Juli thought. He was what he had been, what he had been so terrified of becoming. He had reverted back to how he had been in Union. He was Lost. Nothing that Sebastian said mattered, it seemed like he wasn’t saying it at all. It was too practiced, too staged. 

He didn’t have time to think about that though, not with how Stefano had vanished in a puff of blue smoke, the edges tinged with orange. The puff remained once he was gone, a billowing pile of smoke. He tried to track the movement with his eyes but Stefano was teleporting around the stage, so fast that he was barely visible before he was moving again. 

Sebastian tired to predict him, had gotten decent at it over their time together, outside of STEM but there was no discernible pattern to his movements. 

“I’m over here!” Stefano called out to him, drawing his attention to the right side of the stage. “or am I here?” 

He appeared in front of Sebastian dragging his knife up, slicing through his shirt. He could have gotten him right then, could have sliced through skin, but there was something holding him back. Sebastian only had time to aim, to read his expression, before he was gone again. Concentration, determination, and dread. He looked like he was trying to fight it, to be himself. Sebastian could use that. 

“Talk to me, Stefano!” he called out, turning at the sound of movement. He barely caught a glimpse of purple before he was wrapped in smoke again. “We can fix this.”

“Picture this!” Stefano exclaimed and Sebastian was spinning, though not fast enough as the camera came out, as the flash enveloped him. He couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, and Stefano was wandering around him, calm and graceful. Sebastian was able to see the veins on his skin, the dark red ones filling with blood. It was taking him over. He was losing the fight. 

Stefano put a finger to his lips, considering, and it was just a chance, a moment of hesitation, him trying to decide what art to create with Sebastian’s body, that he was able to notice her. There was an audience. There were flames springing up from every chair, filling the theatre with smoke but it was all contained, moving in slow motion, and then the chairs were bursting once more. Sitting in the center, right at the front though, was Amber, writing on a notepad and glancing up at them, passion filling her pages. 

This was just an act. They were playing along with what her characters would be doing. This was a scene in some novel. He couldn’t even be sure if this was the real Stefano. 

He stepped into the cube of flash and he wasn’t slowed by it at all. He touched the tip of the blade to his finger, drawing blood to mix with the blood that had already dried on his skin. Sebastian could see it now, the way that not only barbs but the wire itself had dug deep into his skin. His wrists were puffy and angry around the wounds. Sebastian didn’t know what had happened to him while they were separated, but he was somewhat certain that he’d been the lucky one. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what all had happened to Stefano. 

He brought the blade up to Sebastian’s eye, just like he had way back then, and dragged the tip down his temple, through his crows feet. It was like a lightning bolt being etched into his skin. “You lost it before, my mark on you. Let’s see if it’s more permanent this time.”

The blue cube was gone and so was Stefano. Sebastian turned, gun in hand, to Amber, trying to ignore the pain in his face. It was nothing, compared to other wounds he’d sustained, but it was so close to other scars, he knew that it would stay longer than a syringe could deal with. It was too similar to wounds in life. 

“Stop this!” he cried out, “Amber, please! You can’t do this to us, we’re not puppets or actors or characters or whatever!”

She gave him a small smile and wrote another line. 

“You can’t avoid me!” Stefano called out and Sebastian turned again, seeing him standing there, just a few feet away. He was spinning the knife in his hand and, the moment that Sebastian was facing him he threw it. 

Sebastian gasped, reeling back as the knife slid into his shoulder and Stefano was gone in another flash. He reached for it, ready to pull it out, but it flashed as well and was gone, leaving the wound a gaping hole to dribble blood. He didn’t want to fight, he didn’t want to hurt Stefano. He couldn’t not though, not if he wanted to survive. He wasn’t sure if he was able to break through to him, not when he was moving so erratically, not when Amber was pulling the strings. 

The next time he saw Stefano he fired two shots into his leg, making him crumple to his knee, halting him in his movements. “Snap out of it!” he begged, taking another few steps forward. 

“Damn it!” He growled, pulling himself back to his feet. “You’re beginning to annoy me!”

He flashed and he flashed and the stage was getting so full of smoke that it made Sebastian’s eyes water more than the pain did. Fire, of course. Everything that he cared about was tarnished by it. He wouldn’t allow fire to destroy anything that he loved; it took a lot of work to wash smoke out but what it touched could be salvaged. He would not lose Stefano to this. 

She wasn’t going to let them go. She wasn’t going to work with them. There was no chance that she would allow them to help her. She was just going to keep twisting them into what she wanted until they were both dead, for the love of her writing, for her art. 

He tried to keep his ears open, to know where Stefano was, as he turned towards the audience once more. Amber wasn’t looking at him. She was writing. He’d killed people before, this would be easy. There was no other way. She didn’t want there to be. 

“Philistine!” Stefano spat and he could hear him running, his shoes clicking against the floor but Sebastian had made his decision. 

He pulled the trigger. 

Stefano’s hand was grabbing him by the shoulder, forcing his body to turn, and even though Sebastian brought up his arm to protect himself, Stefano got past it easily. 

“You must!” He stabbed Sebastian in the chest, the blade going deep, the lens of his eye a bright gold of flame. “Suffer!” Another stab into the same wound and Sebastian was gasping feeling his blood spatter, his lungs fill. “For my!” Deeper, deeper, and the pain was an odd coldness, an icicle in a mound of numb agony. “Art!” He was grabbing a hold of Stefano, even as the blade entered him once more, as Stefano tried to pull himself away. He was clutching at his sleeve, blood filling him up, drowning him. It was the only way for him to keep himself upright, as the blood reached his lips and started to drip down his chin.

\---

The building flickered, fading in and out of existence, before its paper-thin wall caught fire, the flames from the art, no longer contained, spreading. Stefano was standing on a stage and there was something wrong, something terribly wrong, the blood rushing back into his head from where it had been pulsing on his face. His eyes caught sight of Amber, sitting in her seat in the front row, though her chair was an old rocking chair, and there was blood pouring down her throat from a bullet wound, just off center. There would be no more words coming from her. 

“Sebastian? Sebastian, what’s going on?”

He looked down and this time, when he fell to his knees, it wasn’t because of the migraine clawing back in. It was because Sebastian was lying there before him, sputtering, blood a pool in his mouth. His hand was on his chest, pressing against a deep and mashed up stab wound, multiple stab wounds, all from the knife still in Stefano’s hands. He let it clatter to the ground as he took Sebastian’s cheek in his hand, his memory filling out, understanding exactly what he had done. 

Sebastian was looking up at him and his eyes weren’t angry, weren’t sad, they were expectant, they were full of something that Stefano hated to recognize as adoration because what he had done, what he had become, even though he knew the consequences, wasn’t deserved. He could feel the tears, hot and heavy, falling down his cheek, landing on Sebastian’s forehead. 

“Sebastian! Please! I need you to answer me!”

It was Juli’s voice. The radio; there was something that Stefano could do. He grabbed it off of Sebastian’s belt, pulled it to his lips, as Sebastian shuddered and gurgled before him. 

“Juli! You need to pull Sebastian out, now!” he growled into the receiver. 

She sounded as panicked as he felt, “Where are you! I need his coordinates for an extraction!”

He didn’t know. He looked around, finding the building wasn’t so much burning as it was fading away, though there were still many signs of the flames. They were in the middle of an intersection though, he could see the street signs. If he squinted, brushed away the tears from his eye, he could read them. 

“Erin and Jefferson! Juli, please.”

“I’m going as fast as I can.”

The street names must have been enough because, after a moment, Sebastian started to fade away, like golden light was taking over where his body had been. He reached out, eyes wide, grabbing for Stefano. Stefano took his hand, watching him slip away. He was going to live. He was going to be fine. Stefano’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding. 

“I’ve got him,” Juli said as the light faded away, as Stefano was left on the cement, the stage fading away with the rest of the building. All that was left of Sebastian was his gun, a few knives, and a camera. “He’s in bad shape, didn’t even wake up, but his stats are improving. What the fuck just happened? He was about to go into cardiac arrest!”

“I stabbed him,” Stefao explained, reaching out for the camera. He didn’t know why Sebastian would have had something like that. 

“What?”

He clenched his fist, feeling his tendons rub against the barbed wire. He bit at his lip. “I. Stabbed. Him.” He repeated, getting up to his feet. “I did something utterly belligerent and I allowed myself to be used. And I stabbed him. I want you to promise me something Juli.”

Her voice was quiet, almost cold. “What is it?”

“Don’t let him back in. I can find Joseph on my own, get him out. I don’t- I don’t want Sebastian to be in any further danger because of my actions.”

A pause. “I can’t promise that. You know how he is. If he wants back in, even if he doesn’t know the science behind it, he’ll find a way. And he knows Joseph. You don’t. He’s more likely to trust Sebastian than you.”

He picked up the rest of Sebastian’s arsenal, setting them on his person. “We’ll see about that. When he comes back he’ll have to start at the beginning. I’m already much closer.”

“Stefano, there’s something I need to talk to you about.” Juli sounded like she had a secret, like there was something that she knew that she was going to get into trouble for. 

He stopped in his tracks. “What is it?”

“You’ve been having seizures. Both of you. I think it has to do with the Haunted but there’s no reason for that to be in this instance of STEM. Sebastian was Haunted in Beacon, but not in Union and you, you should never have become Haunted in the first place.”

“Lost,” Stefano said and the word held meaning now. It was more than a name for some brainless monsters. It was how he felt all the way down in his bones. He was lost and he had lost himself to power. “That’s what I am. I am one of the Lost of Union.”

“Well whatever you are, whenever you turn into it that’s when the seizures are happening. To both of you. And if you keep going like you have been, it’s going to kill you.”

“And yet you have done nothing to stop me.”

“No, because I’d never hear the end of it if I left Joseph behind. I have a lot riding on this too, you know?”

“I see.” He turned off the radio and clipped it back on his hip. He was in a different part of Junction than he had been before, but he could see something up above, something that he thought was the sun, but then it flickered in and out of existence in long swaths of light. He would have said it was a lighthouse if it weren’t for the fact that there was no water around or that he didn’t see a building attached to it. 

It was only a few blocks before he realized where he was, heading back the way he had come, from where he had been pushed out of a window. He knew, at least, that he was heading in the right direction.


	10. Back and Back and Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting to up this to an M rating! And, yes, some of the quotes in here are from real life, don't worry about it.

There wasn’t a building there before. There wasn’t one now either. Joseph stood by the window, watching it, trying to study it through the constant headache that buzzed through his head. The building didn’t even last an hour and, when it fell, so did a heavy weight off of his shoulders. It felt like he was breathing for the first time in a long time, as he saw the paper walls burn away. 

It was like someone had finally dropped his leash. 

His daughter’s room was tinged blue, and it was cold but that was alright, he didn’t feel the cold anymore. The moment that he felt like he was in control, that he felt his power returning to himself, that he felt like he wasn’t being kept under the thumb of another, and of course Ruvik had to show up. 

“She’s dead,” Ruvik mused, standing in the doorway behind him. “The parasite. Looks like you’re now in charge of this place.”

Joseph took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He sighed. He wasn’t in charge. He didn’t want to be in charge. He wanted out, one way or another. He turned towards Ruvik. “I’m not though, am I? Not with you here.”

Ruvik took a step towards him, slow, methodical, but without any regards of Joseph’s well-being, he wasn’t some kind stranger trying to approach a frightened rabbit. Joseph had been that rabbit for far too long. 

“Think what you want, you have more control than you believe. Emily has no desire to lead and I am bound to you, one way or another. You are a follower, that is true, and I will take over STEM if you desire it.” 

They were close now and if Ruvik breathed they would have been sharing oxygen. One of his cold, dead hands, rested against Joseph’s cheeks, his fingers raised against his temple. The cold soothed his headache. Joseph leaned forward, letting his forehead rest against the other man’s. His captor, his creator, the man who had all of the control over his mind and body, as much as he claimed otherwise. 

Joseph closed his eyes, their lips so close together they could kiss just by accident. “Who killed her?” he chose to ask instead. There was that man, who he’d found running, the one who he’d bound with barbed wire and was just as much a monster as the rest of them. He doubted that he had been the one to best her. 

“A fool,” Ruvik explained, his free hand trailing down Joseph’s back. “He came here for you, to get you out of Junction, but then, after beating her, he left. He abandoned you, Joseph.”

Joseph pulled away, trying to understand. That lined up with what that strange one eyed man had said, that he was there to rescue the Cores, but that he had left just as easily was strange, without completing his goal. And he’d said ‘we’ before. There must have been another one then. He was alright with being abandoned, he was used to it. 

“I won’t abandon you,” Ruvik said, his hand now rough on Joseph’s jaw, drawing his attention back, pressing his chapped, broken skin against Joseph’s lips. “I’ve been here for you every step of the way. There’s no getting rid of me.”

Joseph melted against him. He didn’t want to be under Ruvik’s control, but it was so much easier that way. He kissed him back, kept his mouth open so that Ruvik could slide his tongue into his mouth, and he didn’t protest as Ruvik ran his fingers through his hair, messing up what remnants of style he’d attempted. He let Ruvik move him back towards the wall, to the window. It was so much easier to just give in, let Ruvik win. He had been on the edge for so long, having someone else act as the edge beneath his feet was what he needed. 

He was turned towards the shattered window, he could see everything that was happening below, as Ruvik kissed down his neck, those cold hands working up his shirt from underneath. He breathed. This was where he belonged, this was what he was good for; following someone else’s lead. He’d always been a follower. 

A flicker of blue and orange and Joseph was biting at the inside of his cheek. There was that man. He hadn’t left. It must have been someone else that Ruvik had meant. The man was staggering and slow, but he looked decently well armed and much angrier than before. Being thrown out a window did that to some people. 

“He’s coming for you,” Ruvik said, one of his hands trailing down, leaving Joseph’s chest to go down his hip, still under the clothes. The cold spread heat inside of him. “He’s like an ant. He doesn’t know what he’s dealing with, just tracing a path to some prize he doesn’t understand.”

Joseph’s hand were on the window frame, the cold surrounding him, making him feel like he was floating. The man didn’t know what he was doing, what he was coming for. He thought that he was coming for Joseph, but Joseph was gone. There was just this haunted pet, this thing that Ruvik steered around. 

There were more of them too, bubbling cement where corpses grew and then the corpses were pulling themselves to their feet, the haunted alive and ready to slow him. There were more of them now, more than Joseph had ever seen. Ruvik wanted the man out. He was creating these things to be obstacles, to protect Joseph for his amusement. 

Joseph wanted to jump out the window. How long had he wavered on the edge, wanting to jump? 

Ruvik’s mouth was against his ear, his hands in more pleasurable places. “You’re not going anywhere, little Joseph. You are mine to command, just as this world is yours.”

\---

There was movement all around him. There were figures, those almost human things, the haunted, he knew now, wandering the streets. There were none of those strange orbs of bone and muscle, none of those dog things with almost human faces. It was just the haunted, everywhere. 

He thought to hide, to just sneak around them, but even the buildings around him were full of them. He could see them, some of them carrying torches, between the wood that boarded up the doors and windows. None of the buildings had been boarded up before. Someone was trying to hide something, or protect themselves. 

He knew it had something to do with Amber, with her death, as her power faded the other Cores must have grown stronger. It just meant that they would be harder to beat, if it came to that. He didn’t want it to. The whole point was to get them out of there. He didn’t want to hurt Joseph, even though the thought of him out of here, for real, an actual presence in Sebastian’s life, made his heart twist in an agonized tightness. He especially didn’t want to hurt Emily. She was just a child, after all, and he had done enough hurting of children for a life time. He had to get through to her, make her understand, that he didn’t kill the real Emily, even though he was the cause of her death. 

But for now he had to fight or run straight through all of the Haunted in the twisting street. There were so many of them, he didn’t bother counting. He pulled out his camera and focused it on the closest of them before pulling the trigger and freezing them in its flash. It wouldn’t hold them for long, but it gave him time to run up and past them before they knew he was there. He kept taking pictures, slowing them down, capturing as many of them as he could with the flash. 

More running, staggering, and he wanted to just step forward, to move, but doing so always aggravated the eye, made thing worse. He could hear them, growling, calling out, as the flash faded, and they were after him, droves of them. He had bought himself time, but not enough. Sweat was pouring down him, his leg locking up, his momentum the only thing keeping him moving forward. 

He could feel them reaching, could feel their fingers wrapping around his arms, his sides, before he tore himself away and forward, just an inch out of the way. He pushed himself harder, focused on a space further down the road, and stepped forward. 

When he landed he was only a block away, a block closer to the police station, and his migraine was just needles in his head. They weren’t important, they weren’t anything. He had gone through far far worse. 

There was a sound from above him and he slowed, just for a moment, to look up past the street above him and it’s the motionless, impossible sky. There had been no stars and no moon, it was just a navy ceiling, but now he could hear the sticky stretch of too dry eyes opening and there they were, in the thousands, in the millions, eyes opening, some larger than football fields, and he was sure some were as large as the real thing, though he couldn’t see them from there. They were panning, all of them looking in different directions, and when one of them found him, the rest snapped to his position. 

“Cazzo!” 

He stepped forward again, and again, but the eyes followed him, most of them, anyway. The ones that didn’t trailed behind him, and he followed their gaze in terror. Something was hunting him, and if it was looking away there had to be a reason. 

The eyes fell onto the haunted with light on them, as if their massive pupils were spotlights, and as the light washed over them the haunted seized, standing still, the barbed wire and glass and knives in their bodies spreading, becoming something darker, lumpier, metal. They stretched and became taller, like an adult form a child’s perspective, and their arms curled and broke into long claws. They moved slowly, as if there was hardly any give to the metal they had become, and the only part of them that were still flesh were their mouths. 

“How could you?” one of them said. 

“You’re such a disappointment,” said another. 

“I thought we raised you better than this,” a third.

Some of them were still haunted, but they were being changed quickly. And all of them had something to say. They were all terrible things, things that no one should have said to them, especially not a child, but Stefano knew that these were all things that had been said to Emily, knew that these were hers, monsters that frightened her, that she had twisted into something that could work for her, as much as they hurt her. 

“Why are you doing this?” “You’re killing our son.” “Don’t you like yourself?” “I don’t like the way you’re acting.” “You’re making this very hard for yourself.” “Don’t tell anyone else about this.” “You’re tearing this family apart.” “What would your mother think?” “You’re too young to know.” “Don’t you love us?” “Don’t you love us?” “Don’t you love us?”

Stefano resumed his running. He could see the police station. He could see the sign. He was almost there. He was almost away from the crowd. 

He focused on it, on a spot just before the entrance, and he stepped forward. 

Perhaps he had done something wrong, because the world was still that same cold blue that the smoke that followed his movements was. But it was colder, it was wrong. He could see the door to the station, but there was viscera, organs and rot growing over it, a shield, something to keep him out. The mob was still following, as slow as it was, the eyes still on him. 

A man stepped forward, out of a crack of static in the world. Stefano had never seen him before but he recognized him immediately. After holding Sebastian through so many nightmares, he had no excuse to not recognize Ruvik immediately. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked. 

He was too slow though, he didn’t know how Ruvik moved, how he worked. With a touch he was gone, thrown back, away from the police station, through the crowd behind him. They reached for him, some of them even caught a hold of him, but they couldn’t hold on, not as he was moving so fast, his scream torn from his mouth before he could even hear it. 

“Don’t you love me?”

\---

Joseph straightened his clothes as best he could, though they were half ruined with wear and half ruined with blood. He ran a hand through his hair, slicking it back away from his face. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d last showered but it was so greasy that it maintained shape without any product. He picked up the ax, holstering it against his shoulder, and left the room. 

It was one of two rooms that he ever spent any time in. His Erin’s room, he kept in the best condition possible, and he’d been only barely brave enough to get Ruvik to remove them before they stained his memories of her. The room he was leaving now was little more than a padded cell with the bed wrapped in the blankets he’d stolen from one of the nearby houses, a brown trench coat resting on top of it as a blanket. There was a desk in there, and all of his notes, a cup of coffee that had solidified from neglect. He didn’t remember eating. He didn’t know if he needed to here, but there was no sign of it in his room. 

He walked down the curving hall, steps between each of the rooms. He could hear chattering in there, sometimes, though none of it ever led anywhere. He’d thrown the shutters open in the beginning, looking inside, finding no one. Some of the doors were wrapped in barbed wire. They hadn’t been when he arrived. 

He stopped before Erin’s door. He thought he had closed it. 

There was a girl in there, the right age, the right shape, and she was standing in front of the window, looking down at the street. There was a hard lump in Joseph’s throat, one that he tried to swallow down. Erin wasn’t here. He’d never been able to make her here. He was glad of it, in a way. 

“She’s dead,” the voice wasn’t Erin’s, neither was the girl. Joseph scratched at his jaw with his free hand, gripping the ax with the other. “Don’t you feel it? I do. I feel so much less constrained now.”

“What are you doing here Emily?” Joseph asked the floor. He didn’t like her being here, not in Erin’s room. 

She turned from the window, “I wanted to see you Joseph. And I like it here. I like being around girl things.”

His headache was a dull throb but it was still there. He leaned against the door frame. “You have your own girl things.”

“Am I a bad girl?” her voice cracked, the window following suit. She buried her face in her hands. 

Joseph was tired. He wasn’t in the mood for consoling her. He had been at one point, before he felt like madness was his day to day. “Why would you think that?”

“There’s a man here, a Mr Valentini. He says he’s come to help me. He’s a big big deal. I don’t think you know just how big of a deal he is.” 

“The man with the hair covering his eye?”

“There was an explosion in the war and he got a big chunk of shrapnel in it. He’s allowed to cover his eye. It inspired his art. He’s an amazing artist. He’s,” she paused, voice worbling. “He’s my role model.”

“What did you do?”

She wiped at her eyes, coming forward, out of Erin’s room. Her eyes were red and puffy. “I asked him what happened to Emily. She was one of his models. She died. He said it was his fault that she was dead. I don’t know though, I don’t know if he killed her. I sent things after him, I was so angry.”

Joseph shrugged, “You can try to apologize, that might work.” It was the kind of advice he’d give Erin, was advice he’d given her, back when she and Lily would play together and one of them would do something that upset the other. He’d never see that again. Lily was dead and Abby had full custody and he was here, in this nightmare. There was no getting out. He felt his cheeks get hot, itchy, and he scratched at them, nails catching in scabs and tearing them off. 

“I can’t though. That guy who doesn’t know how pants work put him somewhere, threw him far away. He was so close to getting here.”

Joseph had to stifle a laugh then, pausing in his scratching, in his nostalgia, to try to imagine how Ruvik would respond to being referred to like that. 

“Well, I guess we’re going to have to go look for him,” Joseph offered. 

“You’re gong to help me?”

“I don’t have anything better to do, at the moment,” Joseph thought on it, on any excuse to not help her. He liked Emily, all things considered. It was just hard to, since she was the same age, mentally, as Erin, just a little bit older than Lily would be. She reminded him of people that he’d never see again, even though she pretended to be an adult. 

“I put some eyes to the sky, literally,” she took his hand away from his face, wrapped their fingers around each other, and he could feel her skin, real skin, warm and alive, so much different from Ruvik’s. “I saw him, almost arrive. I don’t know where he’d be now.”

“You know I’m a detective, right?”

She nodded, enthusiastically. 

“Then you know that means I can find him, no problem.”

She grinned then, toothy and wide. 

Joseph didn’t need to tell her that he already had an idea as to where to start looking. 

\---

He thought that he was going to fall forever but then he was hitting a pair of double doors. He coughed, his ribs bruised, the air knocked out of them for a moment. It was raining. He didn’t remember it raining before. There was light everywhere, so bright that he had to close his eye, flashes of red and blue making stars behind his iris. The rain was soaking into his suit though and he groaned, pulling himself up to a sitting position and then further, so that he was standing. 

He took a quick look around, finding the way he had come from barricaded by police vehicles, all with their lights on, a single black car, and an ambulance. There was a roundabout, with lush plant life growing on it, and no sign that a man of 5’10” had just been thrown through it at a high speed. There was police tape as well. There were no people in Junction, no crime.

He didn’t get the door fully open before the stench was too much and he had to turn away, gagging. It reeked of blood and viscera, all too old to be salvageable. It was not the smell of his dark room but that of many deaths, all set aside until someone could make sense of them. He pulled up his scarf, tied it around his face to block out as much of the smell as he could, and opened the door. 

It was a lobby, gray and red, the veins in the marble floor confused with the splatter of blood. There were bodies everywhere, mostly in chairs though some of them were on the ground. None of them seemed to be too panicked, none of them were running for the door, but there was blood pouring from their orifices in such a way that it couldn’t have been instantaneous, not for all of them. They were all dressed in gray sweat pants and long sleeved shirts that had ties on the back, high collars, and a red symbol on the chest. This was a mental hospital. 

Stefano stepped into the room, noticing some movement towards the back, where one door lay open with light streaming through it. It was a little flash of red, not blood but clothe, and then whatever it was attached to and leaned forward. There was a desk with a computer and a high ridge, so whatever it was must have been hiding back there.

“Hello?” he asked, drawing closer. 

“Hello!” the woman replied, pulling herself up to a proper sitting position behind the desk. She was pretty, in a stern way, though her hair was too meticulous and her voice too chipper to be real. She was dressed like an old fashioned nurse, with the little hat and dress, with a red cardigan that matched the aesthetic. “Welcome to Beacon Mental Hospital. My apologies for the mess. How might I help you?”

She wasn’t real. Even with her sharp framed glasses and dark red lipstick, little hints of a personality, it was clear that she was another instance of A.I. She had a ledger though, sitting before her, that would have some information that he could use, hopefully. 

“I’m looking for someone, a Joseph Oda?” He glanced at her papers. 

She gave him a benign smile before rifling through her papers. She shouldn’t of had to rifle through her papers. She was a machine. All of the information should have been in her head. She went through every page, her expression not changing, closed the ledger, turned it around, and started again. Something was wrong. 

“Are you alright?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” she said, that smile still present. “Isn’t that funny? I’m supposed to know, but I don’t. The rooms all have occupants but they don’t exist. There is something wrong with the system. You are a Mobius operative, correct? Would you like a list of malfunctions?”

“No, that would be far too long, I’m certain,” Stefano answered. 

Her head turned, sharply, too sharply. The point was that she was supposed to pass as human, if other people came in here. It must have gotten stuck too, because she had to grab it by the chin and wrench it back into position. 

“Joseph Cedric Oda is within this building, and not at the same time. Block 24A-31E is Core JO’s primary state of establishment, otherwise known as The Junction City Police Department. This is not The Junction City Police Department. This is Beacon Mental Hospital. It is still Block 24A-31E.” she shook her head, taking off her glasses in a very human motion. “There is supposed to be an elevator to go up, but it has been misplaced. How does an elevator get misplaced?”

Stefano shook his head. “I’m afraid that I can’t answer that.”

She pointed at the open door, which he could see many television screens through. “Go through the security room, then through the first door on your right. It will lead you where you need to go, I think.” Her eyebrows were knotted. Her nail polish was chipped. That meticulousness failing her. “I’m not supposed to think.”

Stefano walked towards the door to the security room, not looking around the lobby any further. He had seen a lot of death and he had found beauty in death but there was no beauty here. 

“Excuse me, sir?” the A.I. asked, drawing his attention back to her. “I’m sorry to disturb you, I am sure you are very busy.”

“What is it?”

“I have a secret and I think that it might be an error in my own system.” Her eyes were large and round, downcast. 

Stefano made his way back to her. He may have felt as much as she did, on the worst days, but he had learned how to show sympathy better, how to help people, even if he couldn’t empathize. “It’s just us here, no other operatives are listening in.”

Still, she stared at her hands, folded on her lap. “I’m. I’m scared.”

\---

There was movement, a gentle lapping of the opaque fluid that Sebastian was lying in. Slowly, he opened his eyes, finding the room bright, wrong too substantial. There was a light beeping of a life support system, another one, quieter, a little bit further away. He turned his head, finding, first, the side of the tub, and then Kidman, getting in the way of his sight. He couldn’t see Stefano. 

“Ha, I’m. I’m awake?” he asked, voice weak but not terribly. 

Kidman handed him a bottle of water and his fingers already felt tense, chalky, from how long he’d been there, unmoving. “Do you remember what happened?”

Sebastian took the water from her, touching his chest, where the blade had dug in over and over again, with his other hand. “He stabbed me.”

“He took your radio, called for extraction,” Kidman explained. “He’s going to find Joseph on his own, get him out. It would be better for you not to go back in.”

“Well, fuck him,” Sebastian spat. “I’m going back.”

Kidman smiled wryly. “Yeah, I told him the same. Drink up though, you’re body needs a break from almost having a heart attack. We’ll go a few minutes, at least let him think he’s progressing without your help, and then send you back.”

He fumbled for a moment before getting the bottle open and he drained half of it in one go. “Thanks, Kid.”

She stiffened at that. “Don’t call me Kid.”

There was ice in his voice, some kind of nerve touched. “Okay, I got it. Really though, thanks, Juli.”


	11. Flames Burn Brightest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for no chapter last week! I kept picking up shifts at work and ignoring my health and then I lost all of my writing, twice, so this is the third attempt at this chapter! Hopefully this is the only chapter that's so cursed.

Emily talked a lot. It was nice, even though it wasn’t the right place for it. There was an odd need to be silent here, as if the fact that it was still a hospital forced a desire to keep voices to a whisper. But she spoke clearly and constantly. 

It should have been annoying, he was sure of it. Instead it reminded Joseph of Erin, on the rare occasion that he’d get to see her. She would do the same thing, try to update him on every detail he’d missed, and he’d missed so many. After the divorce he’d missed even more. He missed her. He knew that it was his fault that he hadn’t been able to see her, that Abbey had full custody because he was too buried in his work to be a real father. Odd how the only thing that had gotten him to dig himself out was when his partner had burrowed his way inside, taking his place to be buried in work and booze. 

They had been going down a spiral staircase for a long series of minutes when Joseph opened a set of wooden doors and led the way elsewhere. The top few floors were just stairs but when the lighthouse grew wide enough there was an elevator. The room was of decent size, a dozen beds sitting in their places, lined up against the walls. They all had leather straps and bloodstains and no blankets to be seen. Between them were boxy appliances that Joseph was certain weren’t life support systems but they looked like they were something similar. There were cabinets of expired medicine in the corners and there was a leak somewhere up above because there were puddles on the yellowed tile. 

Where there wasn’t, were monsters. Joseph had already taken care of what he could, with his ax in hand. He’d broken a few of them too, but there were enough emergency exits that he’d been able to stay supplied. And he hadn’t been alone back then. 

Emily finally went quiet when they got to the other side of the room, through a hallway, and to a room that, other than the large tub in the middle of the room, was practically empty. Joseph swallowed as he saw it, transfixed terribly, and tried to walk past it. There had to be another way down. There had to be more to this place. He had seen the tub before, many times, but it always made him feel strange, like he was in two places at once, and it filled him with dread and exhaustion. Part of him, an intrusive part that sounded terribly like Ruvik, told him to rest, to let everything go, to just give in. He tried to move on. 

He only got about half way across the room when the noise started. It was that terrible high shriek, that piercing note, and it ripped through him. It made him itch and he scratched and his back arched as he felt the wounds spread, his inky blood rising to the surface, hot and toxic. He could tell that he was screaming, that Emily was yelling but there was nothing that he could do to fight that. There was nothing that he could do to fight this. It was pain and it was glory, because the poison that shot through him felt like ecstasy and the pain felt like home. This was what he really was and the human that he was trying to be was just so constraining. 

Emily went quiet when his hands went around her throat. He could see her as she was, as she really was, terrified and small, even though she pretended to be an adult. She was as good at pretending that as he was at being human. And her pulse felt strong and firm under his skin. He squeezed and she struggled and it was like a dance, her body writhing as she kicked out, tried to pull away. He was leading though and he grit her teeth tasting his own blood on them, as he pushed her back and against a wall. 

Her heel connected and then some with his shin and he cried out as the nail of it was embedded firmly in his skin. 

“You’re going to pay for that, you little bitch!” he growled, blood and spit spraying into her face. 

She screamed, twisting her ankle and dragging it out of his skin and he collapsed at the pain and momentum of it. He released her, for a moment, just to get his bearings, but it was enough. She was on her feet and running, clutching her throat. Dark shapes were growing out of the floor, hard metal, cast iron. It built a gate behind her, so he couldn’t follow her, and there were shapes, not quite people, too blocky, like a child’s sculpture, hanging around the room. Some of them had too many arms, growing out of their backs. Some of them had bouquets of roses instead of heads. 

“You can’t stop me, little bitch!” Joseph cackled after her. He did not feel fear. Like this, when he was honest with himself, he felt like nothing could hold him back. Even if something hurt him, it was only temporary. “I’m gonna find you! And when I do, I’m going to tear your pretty little head into pieces!”

He had dropped his ax when he turned. He knew that he couldn’t fight the creatures that Emily had made but he did like the ax. There were scratches on his back that he couldn’t itch without it and it was security and safety all on its own. 

\---

A white door in a storage closet, boxes upon boxes of things he didn’t care about. There was a red button to the right and he pressed it, making the door slide open. Behind it were stairs, much older, in much worse of a state, that lead down. They were cement and there was no fear of them collapsing under his weight but he still took them slowly, his hand on the wall to support himself. 

A nonsensical hall followed it, though it didn’t lead anywhere. There were no doors to go through, just an open trap door in the floor with a ladder going down. He thought that he was on the bottom floor to start with. Logically, the trap door would lead to a crawlspace, if anything. But the ladder went on too long, at least a full floor if not two, and it let out into a small maze. There was more cement and more chain link and almost all of the turns led to dead ends. There was only one direction he could go. 

It was another dead end but this one ended in a missing panel of flooring, a hole. He had to go down more. He wasn’t sure if he was still even in the hospital. It was starting to feel closer like he was dropping down into the bowels of hell. 

Landing in a pool of lukewarm, viscous fluid didn’t help that though. The smell of death and rot filled his nostrils and the sound of flies filled his ears. The fluid was seeping into his clothes, marring his flesh. He wiped at his drenched face with his drenched hands. 

There were flourescent lights and it was enough to reveal the room and the pool that he was standing in. It was, at one point, a pool of fresh red, of utter beauty in its most basic shape, paint before being smeared onto a canvas. He was waist deep in blood and viscera. His pulse thrummed, pain flaring in his eye and inspiration pulsed through his lower gut, trying to reach up and out, trying to get into his throat. He could use this to make something powerful, of such grandeur. He ran a hand through his hair, brushing it away from his face for a moment and squeezed some of the clotted blood out of it. He would do no such thing. He had too much to do and this was all far too old. 

He climbed out via a ladder and left the bath of claret and refuse, going through a door instead. 

“This way!” came a weak voice, or a ghost of a voice, that he did not know. It echoed around the sewer system, as if trying to direct him. It wasn’t possible for it to though, not without a face or a direction. Stefano wasn’t an architect or a city planner, but he was fairly certain that a mental hospital shouldn’t open up into a sewer system. 

He hopped down into it on one side, glad to have it wash some of the cooling and drying blood on his skin. Though he was certain it was just as much a biohazard, the blood being on him made his mind race to simpler times, to when he was alone and had so much power. That power was in him now and it was demanding an audience. 

He climbed back out of the water, onto the narrow walkway. He could see where he was supposed to go now. There were a few bridges over the sewer but past them there was a large door of chain link, slightly open. He knew the bridges would just lead to distractions. There was even a light over the door, in case it wouldn’t catch his attention. 

He went through it and stopped, his head pounding. There was another door but he couldn’t look at it. It hurt too much to see. He clutched his head, stumbling back, that feeling of the migraine that wanted to take him over doubling and tripling so fast. It was different than usual. It was just agony, which he could fall into and allow to envelope him, instead of a slow growth of terrible energy. The door was that problem. It didn’t want him to see. He could hardly make out the red star painted on one side of it, a pick piercing through it. 

It was too late, he knew all about Mobius. But still, his vision was swimming, doubling and echoing. He pushed against the door, eye closed, and through it, feeling like that painted spike was entering his head as he did so. 

The room on the other side didn’t help. It was just more of it. Shuddering and shaking and overlapping, there was a hall and a door and thick tubes on the floor. He limped through it, pushing and going into another room. It was identical, other than the tubes being in a different position. He limped through it, pushing and going into another room. It was identical, though at the end there as something else, a kaleidoscope of light and dull grays. The tubes went upward, up through the floor and somewhere else. There was another door. He slumped against it. It opened slowly, loudly, and he felt his ears would bleed. 

It led to a large tube, wrapped in those tubes, going up, surrounded by a spiral staircase. Finally, a chance to go up. He was glad of it, the fact that he was so far down beneath the earth adding a bit of claustrophobia to his frayed nerves. His legs felt weak though, all of him did. He didn’t want to climb anything. There was something in that tube too, something shifting, trying to keep an eye on him. He couldn’t even see what it was. 

He went to the stairs, clutching at the railing, forcing himself to go up them. His leg buckled on the third step and again on the twentieth and again at some other moment but he wasn’t paying attention to how many steps he had gone at that point. 

At the top there were two doors and some screaming coming from somewhere. He took the second of them. There was a long corridor, full of machinery, and, at the very end of it, salvation. He ignored the pain, the paperwork that he wasn’t supposed to see littering the desks, the information that he knew Sebastian would try to get through if he was there. Just seeing the x-rays on the walls made him feel sick. 

He pushed himself into the elevator and against the back wall of it, sliding down to sit on the floor. He hadn’t even pressed the button, but the elevator was moving on its own, taking him upward. He closed his eye. He rested. He wished that he wasn’t alone. 

There was a ding and the door opened and he was back, outside of Beacon Mental Hospital, just across from the courtyard. 

\---

They were, as expected, unkillable or, at the very least, impossibly difficult to kill. Either way it was fun for a few moments and then terribly dull. Joseph chipped the blade of his ax on the many armed woman that approached him and grunted, kicking her away. He wasn’t getting anywhere. The monsters were slow but they were working on surrounding him and they would do so if he didn’t stop them. 

When a man who’s arms were bound behind him with threads so tight that they looked like they were completely cut through swung at him with his face, all features promptly removed, Joseph had to dodge. He slid beneath it, giggling all the while. Though the main joy was in the killing, the not dying part was also very enjoyable. 

Another woman, this one with an extra head on either shoulder and her arms wrapped in the thorns of rose vines, slammed her hands down over him and he had to bring up the ax to block it as he rolled. He kicked at them but his feet just connected and did nothing to slow them further. Getting out from among them was easy enough with a few more rolls and dodges and then he could make it out of the room with the tub and back to all of those beds. 

The toys had been faster. They were the main tool that Emily used to defend herself and to attack but ever since that man had appeared her tools had changed, become more human, become more morbidly artistic. Joseph had seen the man’s art, or what Emily remembered of it, as she had recreated him a few times, as well as a few of his pieces. It had all been this sort of depraved. 

He scratched himself as he rushed through the room, ignoring the figures now rising from the stained mattresses. They would be just as slow and just as unstoppable. The door at the end flew open and he pushed through it, past the iron made woman with a camera for a face, nude aside from a pair of ballet slippers. 

Instead of letting his momentum take him over the edge of the railing, which hadn’t been there before but had been there before he’d come here, he allowed it to carry him over. He leapt out through a hole into it and onto the dirt floor beneath. There were no enemies here, though there was a series of pipes and a large square pit in the very center. One wall had half collapsed, taking the stairs with it, but there was a walkway the rest of the way around, perfect vantage points for snipers and those who would through weapons or explosives. He also knew there was a winding tunnel behind it, as well as a few prison cells, but that didn’t matter. That would just lead him in a circle. They would catch up. Already he could see a few of them, stumbling out on their foal weak legs to the railing. Falling in with him would do nothing to deter them. 

He went to the pit. He didn’t bother to look into it before hopping casually inside. It was pitch black in there, but he had no need for the light. He knew the way. He’d done this before. 

The fall didn’t last a long time, though the lack of external stimuli was enough to make him feel like he was going mad. It let him pay attention to the feeling of barbed wire in his joins, in the cool burst of puss as the blisters in his skin popped, as he itched and he itched and he scratched until his skin came off in large clumps. The sound in his ears was still there, though it was ignorable now. 

He rolled when he landed, moving through blood and rocks and gore. The bodies had been here for a long time, yet they were still plump, still juicy, and their viscera squelched under his footsteps. He looked up, though there was no chance that he’d be able to see his assailants. He took off his glasses and looked around the space he found himself in. 

There was light, just a little of it, coming through a gap in the stone. He pulled himself through, moving slow, tightening his gut through he didn’t need to too much. There was no way that the metal things could follow after him. 

On the ground, a little to the side, was a torch and, beyond it, there was sound. It was the sound of those things, the Haunted, and they knew he was there. They were looking for him. They were going to find him too. He picked up the torch and his hands were full and his heart was beating. Any moment now and there would be flesh in his path, some chance that he could destroy something. He couldn’t wait. And when they were done he would find that man, the one that Emily liked so much, and tear him apart. 

Part of him hated that. Part of him knew what he was doing and was fighting it. Part of him was weak. He scratched his arms, his face, wondering if there was some way that he could bleed out the weakness. 

\---

He made it to the door and sighed, hoping that he hadn’t just run around in a circle. When he opened the door it didn’t lead to the lobby at least. Instead it led to a long hallway with doors all along one side and windows on the other. The floor was all black and white checkers, all but three long red smears. Stefano didn’t trust it. 

Even without the blood there was something wrong with this corridor. It stank of death and the lighting was all wrong. There was a broken lantern on the floor, having rolled half under one of the end tables that sat between the doors. It felt too cold. 

He made it a full three steps before there was movement at the end of the hall. The door didn’t open but someone came through it. He moved forward, appearing and disappearing in different parts of the hall, getting closer with each one, leaving a trail of static in his wake.

His hands were cold, his fingers stiff and they dug deep into Stefano’s throat. Ruvik wasn’t strong, he was slight, a bit emaciated, but that didn’t matter. Stefano was wriggling and kicking and gripping onto that dead arm, trying to break free, but he was off the ground, choking on those fingers. Nothing he did seemed to matter, Ruvik didn’t care about how he clawed at his scarred flesh or kicked into his ribs. Ruvik just smiled at him, faintly. 

“What a parasite you are, clinging to whatever predator you can find. But look at you, little more than a virus, coming in and trying to infect the entire body, but beaten just as easily.” 

Stars burst into Stefano’s vision as Ruvik tightened his grip. He could feel his skin tearing open as Ruvik tightened his grip. His toes were starting to get cold, as were his fingertips. He couldn’t breathe. He could feel the veins in his face crack and spread, hot and red and full of blood, all spreading from his eye. He could beat this, he could win, if he let himself lose to himself, if he allowed himself to be Lost. 

He dropped his hand to his side, the other one still weakly pulling at Ruvik’s wrist. There was no chance that he would escape, not like this. His fingers brushed the metal of one of Sebastian’s knives. 

He tried to speak. He tried to make eye contact with his soon to be killer. It just made things worse. His lungs were burning. His body was starting to shut down. 

“You think you still have a chance?”

A terrible gurgling sound came from Stefano’s throat. He kicked out once more, though it didn’t even reach Ruvik’s body. 

“You are tiny. You are nothing.”

Stefano slammed the knife into Ruvik’s head, shattering the glass that protected his brain, shoving it deep. Ruvik screamed, throwing his head back and Stefano was given a moment to breathe, falling away from Ruvik, clutching at his clawed open skin as he sucked in air. He pulled himself away, watching, as Ruvik clutched at the wound, still alive, not dying but screaming in a weird voice, something slightly less than human. 

Stefano pulled out another knife. Ruvik pulled the knife out of his head and threw it at him. He wasn’t aiming. He wasn’t doing anything. It hit the floor and skidded away, useless. 

“You think you can beat me? You are pathetic!” Ruvik screamed and Stefano balked, knowing that voice and knowing the fact that he saw. Because Ruvik’s face was cracking, breaking apart, and underneath it was Joseph’s, growling and just as filled with rage. “You are nothing! He is mine and I am his and nothing you can do will separate us.”

It was enough to stay Stefano’s hand. He didn’t know what to believe, if this was the real Joseph or if this was something else. He couldn’t kill Joseph. He would rather die. Sebastian had pulled them in here for Joseph and there was no way that Stefano would be the one to kill him. 

He didn’t need to fight Ruvik though, flames were growing up his legs, as if he’d been dunked in kerosene. It was climbing up him and he was walking towards Stefano, ignoring it. His skin kept breaking, more of Joseph coming through. 

“I created this world!” Ruvik screeched as the flames climbed up his sides, “Mobius is nothing without me! You are nothing without me! And you will never have him!”

Stefano was ready, ready to fight him, ready to run, he wasn’t sure, but he was ready for it. That was before the flames consumed Ruvik and the windows shattered, throwing broken glass through the hall. The hall felt like it went sideways as Stefano covered his face with his arms. The glass pierced him in tiny shards, just enough to make his skin burn as he slid along the floor. Everything was shrieking, yowling sound, everything was too much, everything was suffocating. 

Slowly, everything settled down, all but one scream, the one of a woman, the one of something feral. He lowered his arms, finding himself in another room, smaller tiles on the floor, a long hall behind him. There were corpses around the room. It felt like some sort of arena, the walls made of chain link and barbed wire. 

She was crawling around outside the fence, her long fingers allowing her easily grip. Stefano felt cold as he backed away from her, knowing that she could easily pull the chain link apart and get to him. Her face was hidden beneath a long sheet of black hair but he still knew who she was. 

\---

He had spent too much time out of there but Juli wasn’t letting him back, not until he was guaranteed ready. He was ready. He kept saying that he was ready. Juli was checking his vitals again though. They’d been at this an hour, and his legs were stretched and he was antsy. He had to go back. He had to find Joseph. He had to help Stefano. 

A loud beeping took him out of his irritation and Juli away from his pulse point, releasing his wrist to rush back to Stefano’s side, to read the life support system. Sebastian followed her. 

“What’s going on?” he asked, not knowing how to read the tools. The last time he’d tried was a few lifetimes before, when Myra had been shot.

“He’s not breathing,” Juli admitted. 

Sebastian could feel his panic increase, his heart beating hard enough for Juli to panic once more if he was still hooked up. “Get me in there!” he ordered. 

She glared at him as she grabbed Stefano’s jaw and forced it open, using her fingers to move his tongue out of the way. “That’s not going to help, Sebastian! You’d start back at the very beginning, you wouldn’t get there in time!”

“I have to help him!” Sebastian argued. He’d been stabbed he knew that. Stefano had betrayed him. He knew that too. He didn’t care. He had to do something. 

Stefano gasped though, sucking in breath, his chest heaving. The machine calmed down a moment later and he returned to breathing normally. 

Whatever happened though, it was big, it was terrifying and Sebastian was barely calming down. He grabbed Juli’s radio off of her hip and brought it to his mouth.

“Stefano? Stefano where are you?” he tried not to yell into the radio.

“Sebastian?” Stefano asked. He was still breathing hard but nowhere near as much as before. “I fear that I’m in need of your advice.”

There was a scream, a scream that had woken Sebastian up many times from his nightmares. Laura. 

“Run. Kill it with fire if you can, but other than that, run.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I’m coming for you, alright? Just stay alive. I’m going to come after you.”

There was no response. He didn’t expect one. He gave Juli a simple look before going back to his own tub and climbing in. She didn’t argue this time. She just started to hook him back up.


	12. Virus

There were a lot of them, a lot of those haunted, wrapped in barbs and blades and glass and he burned his way through them, cut them down, tramped through their bodies. They were growing out of the blood on the ground, a constant hindrance, and they kept coming, one for each that he cut down. He didn’t mind, he liked cutting through them, he liked destroying them, but they were slowing him down. He had to get to Stefano, he had to tear him apart. 

There was a large door in his way though, too thick and heavy for him to lift on his own. There was a grated door near it, though he knew that it was locked on his side. He was trapped here. He remembered being here before, with that traitor, that snake, Juli, the one who had shot him and left him here, the one who’d sat by and done nothing while they dragged him into another facility, drugged him, forced him back under, back in. 

He didn’t remember that. He didn’t know how he did now. He had been in STEM this entire time. He had been shot and then when he woke up he was here, in Junction. His head was pounding at the recollection, of the flourescents, of his wrists being bound to a bed, to moments of understanding the world, what they were doing to him, and the amount of time. He was a guinea pig. They had tortured him with this nightmare and then thrown him back into it. She could have done something. Sebastian could have done something. He must have survived. He must have escaped. He didn’t know why no one had come for him sooner. 

His anger rose and his back straightened. There were about a dozen haunted surrounding him, standing on the bodies of the last dozen. They didn’t matter. He would cut through all of them. He would cut through this world. 

There was a door that he didn’t see before, against a wall. It was clean and metal and it didn’t fit in at all. He fought his way to it and through it, slamming the door behind him. 

There was a stairwell, leading up, made of metal and curving. He took it, two steps at a time. He didn’t know where it led but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he kept moving. There were no enemies in here, nothing following him. He was able to breathe. There was a solid floor with medical equipment, too shiny and new for Beacon, diagrams and charts of things that he didn’t understand. A part of him wanted to understand, to analyze, to make sense of it all. 

There were names and images, things that looked like the bathtubs and things that looked like brains made out of machinery on long stocks. He walked closer. He had to move, he had to destroy. He saw the name, written on an x-ray of a head, lines drawn onto it to show where and how to cut through it. A shiver went through him, hatred and love flooding him, a need to be controlled battling with a desire to escape at the name Ruben Victoriano. Ruvik. He was like Joseph, had been tricked by Mobius, shoved in, experimented on. Neither of them were people, not to them. They were only important as long as they were usable in STEM. 

The anger refilled him though it was now an anger with a purpose, with a direction, that filled him to the bones and made him want to fight his way out, to prove those bastards wrong, to get through all of this. It was no longer an urge to destroy. 

The new anger shook him and made his stomach twist. If he was going to get out of here he needed more than anger. He needed his own mind. He needed to be in control. The barbed wire feeling dug deep, not wanting to release him. It twisted inside of him as the ooze from the pustules soak into his blood, trying to control him. It was like Mobius. It was Ruvik. They were both trying to hold him back. 

He fell to his knees, retching, a large ball of blood caught in his throat, too much to come out in a stream from his nose. He forced it up and out and onto the floor before him. He was shaking, chills running through him. His skin itched, the desire to get it off of him as strong as the urge to get rid of Ruvik’s control. His fingers were quaking. His skin was already so loose, hanging off of him. 

He sputtered, wiping his mouth off on his arm, seeing the red and angry veins fade under the skin. He pulled himself up to his feet. Stefano was in the building, somewhere, and he said that he was trying to get Joseph out of there. He didn’t know if he could trust Stefano, but he wasn’t dressed like Mobius, those other scientists that had come into Junction for repairs and to make certain that their little experiment was working out correctly. 

Joseph pulled out his notebook. There were only three pages left of it, the others written into so hard that the paper had ripped, were bloodstained, were scratched and blackened by ink. He took a pen from one of the nearby tables and took down what notes he could, trying to understand the science behind all of this. He wasn’t sure if he could get out from the inside but understanding how the machinery worked would get him closer to an answer. 

He felt like he was being watched but, when he turned, there was just the shadow of a man, far too tall and long to be human. There was nothing that the shadow was coming from. It said nothing though, didn’t move, and Joseph had to pretend it was benign. There was nothing in here beside the four of them and whatever they created. It was nothing unless he thought it was. 

\---

She tore the chain link open and crawled through and then she as after him. She screamed and she pulsed, moving from spot to spot, fast and chaotic. He couldn’t tell where she was going to be. And he was in a hall, a long hall, that was just going straight. There were cabinets on the walls, ones with glass windows and shelves, filled with pill bottles and chemicals. He pulled them down behind him, trying to slow down, Stepping forward to reach the next when she got too close. 

His legs hurt from running, from fighting, from existing. He was stumbling more than he was running. His ankle twisted and he dragged his bad leg behind him. He had to rely on his stepping forward to keep moving, to keep himself from falling. She was right behind him anyway. 

There was nothing that was burning, there was nothing that he could light on fire. Sebastian had told him to fight her with fire but there was no fire here. There was nothing. She was going to catch up to him. 

Eventually there was a turn in the hall, and he slid half past it before correcting himself. It cost him seconds, seconds that he needed, desperately. He felt her long clawed hands wrap around his waist, her nails digging into his skin, before he pulled himself forward and away from her. His blood and chunks of his flesh came away with her grip and he hissed, trying to ignore it, to ignore the pain in his legs, in his head, just trying to keep moving. 

His migraine was half blinding but he was already blind on that side. He had to ignore it. He couldn’t give in. He was strong enough, he could do this. Sebastian had beaten her and he was just a man. He hadn’t had to rely on external power. Stefano was so much weaker. He’d always had to rely on others. 

Another turn and there it was a large wall of flame, something that he could use. There was a figure before it, strong and back lit to the point that it was nothing more than a silhouette. He ran towards it, towards him, hoping that the monster following him would make some mistake, would end up in front of him, would hurt herself on that wall of fire. He had no way to manipulate it himself. 

The man standing before it had a cane and a red shawl and was wearing black robes. Stefano skidded to a stop, not wanting to reach him, not wanting anything to do with him. He was panting, his chest ice, his head a single pounding pulse. And yet he still knew Theodore and would not take another step towards him. 

“You have so much power at your disposal, and yet you scurry around like a lost child,” Theodore stated, one hand raised, palm up. “You are more formidable than you allow. Only by accepting this can you succeed, in this and in all things. No one is coming to help you, no one is going to save you, you have to rely on yourself.”

Stefano wanted to argue, that Sebastian was coming for him, as much as he didn’t want him to. He knew what succumbing to this power would do, what it would make him into. He would be nothing more than the Lost, he would be a monster. He would lose everything. He had been right when he’d been afraid to come into Junction. 

Theodore had distracted him though and the monster had grabbed him, his blood oozing through the tears in his skin as she squeezed his waist once more. It wasn’t a scratch, it was a grab and she was tightening her grip, her second pair of arms on his thighs. She was shoving him down and he fell to his knees and still she was shoving downward. She was trying to force him into the floor. 

He drew Sebastian’s gun and twisted in her grip, firing it a few times in her face. She screamed and stopped pushing down for a moment, but did not release him. She squeezed tighter and he felt his ribs protest and crack. Breathing became hard. There was so much blood in his head. It was all right behind his eye.

He bit his tongue, drawing blood, and gave in. He turned fast enough to make his hair flutter away from the lens in his face, focused as best he could through the pain, and took the shot. 

He howled, his back arching at the agony. The red veins shoved through his skin, full of hot blood, trying to turn him. The migraine blinded him completely, the rest of his body going numb as the lens cracked through him, slicing through his nerves, forcing all attention onto itself. It was trying to make him give in. It was trying to make him the monster. He fought it, but he was drowning, falling under. 

It would be so easy. It would be painless. It would be better for him. He should have given in, become the monster. He was on the ledge and he had jumped but now he was clinging to the crumbling precipice. 

Blood poured down his face, from the veins and from his false eye. His vision was red and blurry and any light was too bright. 

The monster wasn’t moving though, she was still, frozen in his flash. He unpeeled her fingers from his ribs, pulling himself away, stumbling, falling, landing on his side. He tired to breathe. 

The pain wasn’t fading. It wasn’t leaving. He looked up. 

There was no wall of fire. There was no Theodore. He was alone. 

\---

Another story of stairs, another floor of experimental tools, of information. Joseph was trying to make sense of it, but all he was getting was that there had to be a Core for the instance of STEM to be controlled by, that it was connected to all of the other minds within it, and that anyone who entered it would alter it, though not to the same extent as the Core. It was all information that he already knew. He just had diagrams to back it up with. 

He made it to the top of the stairs and he saw no more. There was just the room, a bit dingy but not as bad as the rest of the hospital, and there were six beds in a circle, all with their own life support system and a plastic sheet to separate them. There was a phonograph playing, somewhere, a few other rooms connecting to it. 

It felt familiar. It felt terribly familiar. He didn’t know how, or why, but being here, in this room, made his body ache. His back and his shoulders all had a deep rooted pain, like something had been lodged into them. When he touched them they came away bloody, from his own constant scratching. He continued to itch and to pick at his skin, as he looked around. Other than the painful nostalgia there was nothing there for him though. He sighed and went to the double doors and pushed through. 

The room that he opened up into was almost identical. The beds were replaced with bathtubs though, all filled with a pale white fluid, and there were no plastic sheets separating them. They were all facing a large transmitter, a round metal orb on a pole, attached to a machine that Joseph had seen so many diagrams of. There were three canisters, each a bit larger than a head, attached to the sides. He knew what they were for, that they were supposed to hold the brains of the Cores and when he approached them he felt a cold claustrophobia crawling through him. Each of the canisters had one of their names on it. Amber’s had cracked and there was a pool of fluid under it, but the other two were still perfectly functional. 

He knelt down before it. He knew how to interact with it now and part of him wanted to do so, to open up the other two canisters, to see their contents. He wanted to see if he was in there. Part of him needed to. He had been promise that Stefano was going to get him out of there. If he was just a brain in a jar that wouldn’t be possible. If he was just nothing than there was no point. He wanted that closure but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to trust it even if he saw it. 

There were things in here that he had created. He didn’t know if this was one of them. 

There was a beep though and the clanking of a metal grate accordioning open. It caught his attention and he looked over, spotting an elevator, the door open, a soft golden light spilling from inside of it. It was waiting for him. It was ready to go. 

He walked over to it, scratching the skin of his neck raw, and went inside. He didn’t need to push the button. The door closed behind him and it started to move. He leaned against the wall, breathing, trying to be still, to get his mind in order. He had to find Stefano, they had to work together to get out of here. He didn’t know if the offer was still open to him as he had thrown Stefano out of a window and wrapped barbed wire around his wrists, but he had to try. He couldn’t stay in here much longer. He was losing himself. 

The elevator took a long time and there was a long while in which it only showed him a brick wall, but it was moving at a constant pace at least. He realized about half way through that he was somewhat expecting the elevator to crash and he shook the thought from his head, in case this place decided to follow his concepts. 

The elevator opened into a hall with gray tiles of asphalt. It was part of the hospital proper, that he knew, but the plants had been knocked over, there was rubble everywhere, and the walls were chipped and cracked. It looked like it was getting worse. It looked like everything was falling apart. He’d never seen it like this. 

He moved through the hall, over to the door at the end. He pushed it open slowly. He didn’t want to alert whatever was on the other side. He didn’t know if there was anything on the other side. 

There were boxes on the other side and quite a lot of them, all on different shelves, making a miniature maze from the door to the security room. He remembered this place easily. He had been here with Sebastian. This was where Ruvik had first appeared, shoved a syringe into Joseph’s neck while Sebastian was turned away, and everything had gone dark. This was where he first started losing himself. This was the last place where things had made any sense. 

There was nothing on the screens. There was no one in the room. He went past it and into the lobby. 

The lobby looked like a tornado had gone through it. The acoustic tiling had fallen in places, there were iv drips on the floor, half buried, the furniture and tiling was in shambles, and there was a thick layer of dust on everything, making his eyes burn and his skin itch and he coughed, still finding blood in his spittle. 

There was supposed to be a receptionist, one of those A.I. that he’d met before. She didn’t have a name but he’d liked her well enough, considering that she was a machine and she was very interested in telling him about all of the errors in Junction’s programming. In the beginning, he’d tried to talk to her, have some sort of relationship with her, just to pass the time. 

He went behind the desk, just to check, just for a moment. Her body was on the floor, lifeless as ever, but now not moving. She didn’t have blood she was a construct, but the fluid coming from her neck looked a lot like blood, and it was gushing with a heartbeat that she didn’t possess. 

Joseph put his hand to his mouth, taking a step back. He knew that he shouldn’t mourn, that she was as human as a toaster, but there was still a feeling of great loss there, another friend that he had failed, another death that he could have prevented, if only he’d been a bit faster. 

Her head was in her chair, almost pushed in under the desk, her hair wild. Her face was contorted in fear and there were streaks down her cheeks. He was sure that she couldn’t cry either, but the seat was soaking in both tears and blood. Her expression chilled him. It was far too human. 

\---

He could hardly move. He had to get out of there, had to get away from the monster before his flash faded. His face felt like it was burning. Everything he did just made the pain worse, like he was jamming ice into his eye socket. He dragged himself to his feet and then slid against a wall. The veins were spreading, hot and heavy and thick, pushing through his skin. He could feel them pushing down his chest, wrapping around his scalp. He could barely feel the pain in his ribs or his legs, his head was all that was left. 

He continued down the hall in a haze, all of his attention on his head, on the way that the lights shimmered and blinded him. He closed his eye, moving by feel, supporting himself on the wall. 

He wanted to call Sebastian. He wanted to hear his voice, receive some comfort, tell him that he was alright. He wasn’t alright though. He didn’t deserve Sebastian’s comfort. Sebastian was good with his migraines, knew to leave him alone in the dark and in silence, would make some coffee and get things soft and warm and ready for him when he would wake up after. He couldn’t have such things in here. He had brought this upon himself too. 

He felt like he would break at any moment and being Lost was a wonderful distraction that he wished he could fall into. 

The floor under his feet squelched and it wriggled and writhed under his fingers. He stopped, breathed, and tried to focus. The flourescent light on the ceiling was distracting, a large blur of hellfire, but he tried to focus on his surroundings, what he was touching. All around him was gore, intestines under his feet, flesh and veins on the walls. It was not beautiful, it was not art, but it was chaos. It was coating everything, all but the door, large and red and solid. He shoved himself forward, forced himself to keep going. 

There was a terrible sound behind him, the monster, he was sure, but he didn’t know how far away she was now. He didn’t know much of anything. He just knew he had to keep moving. He had to swallow the pain. He felt like those veins were everywhere, that he was unrecognizable, just red and angry lines. 

He made it to the door. He pushed it open. He breathed. He tried to ignore the lights. He tried to ignore the pain. He tried to ignore the futility of it all. 

At the end of the hall were three doors, though he ignored the ones on the sides for the elevator, the door opening for him, inviting him, before he’d even reached it. He fell in, curling into the corner of the box, watching as the door closed and the elevator started to move, to take him where it wanted. There was nothing that he could do, nothing that he could decide. 

He closed his eye, sniffling, trying to will the pain away. There were only two ways of getting rid of it that he knew and giving into it, becoming a monster, wasn’t an option that he was willing to use. Thus, sleep was the only antidote. He was uncomfortable and he was bleeding but that didn’t matter. If he could sleep well enough that the pain faded, so that he could see, it was enough. 

It took a while for the elevator to reach its destination. He didn’t move until he heard the ding and the screech of the metal door opening. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to wake. He sighed when he did though, seeing where he was. His vision was a little better, as was his head, though it was still the main pain that he suffered. He could walk more though, didn’t have to rely on the wall for support, and the flickering lights of the lobby were little more than signal flares. 

The bodies weren’t strewn about now, but sitting calmly, in their seats. The plants were all in order, as was the furniture. They were all still very dead, thought he blood now pooled around them instead of being splattered against the tile and on the walls. It was all clean. It was all elegant. 

The receptionist was still in her spot, still at work, not paying him any mind. He made his way over to her and slumped on the desk. Just because he was a little bit better didn’t mean he was perfect. 

She looked up at him and, even though his head was pounding, pricks of pain and nausea finally coming back into focus, he could tell that there was something wrong. He skin was cracking, as if it had a fine film of ice over it and each motion made it crack further, spiderwebs crinkling through it. Her eyes were lifeless, more so than before, that fear that she’d shown completely gone. 

He pulled back, standing straighter, but she was faster than he’d expected, throwing herself up and onto the desk, over it. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge her, as she grabbed him, threw him down onto the ground. Her body was solid firm, heavy, and he was knocked back easily, head cracking on the linoleum, blinded and winded at the same time. He cried out and she was speaking but he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t understand her. 

Her fists were pelting him like large stones, beating his chest and arm, as he brought it up to protect his head. She was speaking calmly, all the while, but it was as loud as a scream. He didn’t know any of the words. Everything was dark. She was going to kill him. He could feel it. He knew it. 

His free hand went into his breast pocket, the skin breaking open as her fist slammed down onto his wrist, forcing the barbed wire in deeper into the flesh. He was sure that the bone was fractured, at the very least, but he grabbed the first thing that he touch and threw it upward, slicing her neck open with the karambit. 

She shouldn’t of had blood. She wasn’t human. Red fluid was seeping out of her neck though, pouring down her front. She reached up, touching the deep cut, the knife still half embedded in it, pulling away from Stefano. Expression was on her face now, not horror, but confusion, and pleading. There was something that Stefano didn’t feel often, not since the last time he’d been in STEM. 

She fell off of him, bleeding out, making a terrible sound, gurgling as she tried to speak. He dragged himself away, sitting against the desk, his entire body nothing more than a twisted bruise. He could feel himself bleeding, where her fists had connected with those exposed veins. Guilt forced a choked sob out of his throat and he could do nothing but sit there and try to organize himself, try to compartmentalize the pain, try to make himself whole. 

\---

He was running through the street, trying to catch up. He knew where he had to go. He just had to hope that there would be no distractions this time. He had to get there fast. 

Luci wasn’t in her spot, but a few steps in front of it. He slowed before he even reached her, realizing that there was a problem. It was obvious. She was shaking, twitching, her body like a live wire. There was a hole in her skull, like a bullet wound, and it had shattered her face. Under it was a bright red light, which reflected off of the true texture of her exterior shell. The cracks, the light, continued down her chest, bright red all of the way through. About a third of her body was in shambles. 

“Name and registration, please,” she stated, calm as could be, even though her voice was more mechanic than before. She forced herself to stand upright, her shoulder popping in its socket and Sebastian finally noticed the ax that she was holding. 

“Sebastian Castellanos,” he gave, remembering the long code that Juli had given him before he reentered. “2096-Bcoda-892C-Maintenance-Crew-A6.”

She smiled then, recognizing the code, but the lines between her too perfect teeth were glowing red. Her body jerked and trembled and she rushed him, ax at the ready. She wasn’t running, but walking, her steps too fast for a human, her hips popping out and into socket to accommodate for her missteps, which were plenty, as one foot seemed to have it’s own trajectory. 

“Incorrect. Incorrect. Sebastian Castellanos is dead. Mobius is dead. Would you like a list of deceased Mobius members?” she calmly corrected as she corrected her body, her waist twisting inhumanely as she swung, trying to catch Sebastian as he dodged the ax. He couldn’t prevent the ax going deep into his arm, almost to the bone, as she did so and he cried out. 

Without a proper response she started to prattle off a list, in alphabetical order, all of the people that Myra had killed, all of the test subjects as well as those who had worked for Mobius. She was attacking him all the while, still swinging at him. He couldn’t fight her. He didn’t have any weapons of his own. All he could do was dodge and run. 

The ax came again, her shoulder dislocating so that she could swing behind her. Sebastian jumped but it still dug into his side, twisting and carving out a chunk of his back. He fell to his knee and bolted, adrenaline forcing him forward, keeping the pain at a level that wasn’t debilitating. He raced for the town. He could hear her, still listing, right behind him. 

He made it to the first lot and past it, dodging a few swings of the ax. He was growing tired. He couldn’t handle the pain, the adrenaline making him move fast but exhausting him. He could feel body giving out on him. He was too old for this. 

He jumped through the first window of the first house, glancing around. He could hardly hide, not while bleeding like this, and he wasn’t sure how good Luci was at tracking him. There was something shining though, right on the bedside table, a syringe. He grabbed it and kept moving, deeper into the house, shoving the needle into his arm. His body itched as it stitched itself back together. 

He tried to move quietly, but he could still hear her, still reciting names ending in A, in the house. He turned, went down the hall, and into the next room, closing the door behind him. Another bed, a wardrobe, and a desk. He went for the desk, pulling the chair in after him, and breathed. His wounds were still healing but the bleeding had stopped. He just had to wait. Wait and hope she gave up as easily as the Haunted.


	13. End to Control

The two large doors to the lobby didn’t lead him to outside. Instead they lead him to a hall that looked like a strong enough sneeze would make the walls and ceiling collapse. At the end was an elevator. He went to it, went inside, and it took him down. He leaned against the bars that made up the door, breathing, feeling his body settle, his joints returning to a relaxed state, his blood cool and the poison drip out of it. He wiped it away from his nose, onto his tattered and ruined sleeve. 

He felt like he’d been running for miles, like he’d been throwing weights, as if he’d been running on fumes. He was exhausted and his body was in shambles. Looking down on himself, he knew that he was a terror in appearance, and he knew that there was nothing that could be done about that. All of his muscles were sore and aching.

There were cables, wires, and tubes, outside the door, braiding and tangling as they cascaded down the wall. The bricks were impossible to see because, under the thick lines were pulsing veins, just more tubes, pumping and sliding and dripping around the rest. It was more visceral, more disturbing, than before. 

This was Ruvik’s doing, he knew that, it was in reflection of what he’d seen, what he now understood. Mobius, the people who had created this place, had destroyed Ruvik’s body, they had torn him apart in the most torturous of ways, in order to get STEM running correctly. He’d been the first Core. He was all that there was. 

He was still in control too. No matter how many new Cores were brought in, Ruvi was still in control. He shaped this place, controlled it, made his own inhabitants. Joseph had hoped that, when he got to Junction, when he was made into the Core, he would be free, of Ruvik at least. That had been false, on all accounts. Ruvik had been here, waiting for him. Joseph had been taken again, so easily. 

And part of him loved that, he knew it. He loved having Ruvik care for him, have Ruvik around. The man was a genius and he was so certain and so confident and he’d kept Joseph safe when he’d needed him to. He didn’t know how he would have survived without Ruvik. He didn’t know why he’d want to. 

The elevator dinged and the doors opened and he was in a space wrapped in viscera, in steaming gore, in flesh and tissue. 

\---

He dragged himself forward, back through the security room, back down into the sewers. There was nowhere else to go. There were no other doors, not that he could see. He couldn’t see much. He couldn’t do much. Every few steps his leg would give out and he would falter, catch himself on the wall, his head pounding more than anything else around him. There may have been more to this than he was seeing, there may have been choices, but all he could do was keep moving forward, clutching his blind side. 

Something hot and wet was dripping down his wrist. 

He made it to the door that he couldn’t look at and through it, moving by feel. He kept his eye closed, his hand on the uneven wall, his feet shuffling. There were cords on the floor, ready to trip him. There were machines in the room, making it hard for him to find his way. He was slow. He was lost. He was pointless. 

He made it to the elevator and cracked his eye open before pushing the button. It was waiting for him, same as before. He would get to the top and it would be the same. He was in a loop. He didn’t know how to escape it. He didn’t know what the point was of trying. 

He had to try. He had to find Joseph. He had to make things right. Once Joseph was found and extracted, then Stefano could rest, really rest, and he knew that Sebastian would be happy, with Joseph back in his life, and that tore at Stefano’s chest to the point that he could momentarily focus on something other than his head. 

Sebastian and Joseph would be happy together, they would be safe, and he didn’t know where he fit with that. He knew that Sebastian could love more than person, rationally, he knew that. But he didn’t know if he could believe it, in his heart. He felt like it was a handful of needles, jabbing into his lungs, his heart, his eye. Sebastian had loved Joseph far longer than he had Stefano, and he was willing to come back into this hell for him. Stefano had come with him, willingly, but because he was worried that Sebastian wouldn’t make it through. And then he’d betrayed him. 

There was no reason for Sebastian to want him now, not with what he’d done. He said that he was coming, that he would help Stefano, and he believed that, truly, he did, but he didn’t want it. He didn’t deserve it. He knew what would happen too. Sebastian would find him and Joseph and he would chose the latter. It didn’t matter what he said, Stefano knew that he would be forgotten, that Joseph was more important. 

He doubted Sebastian would ever come for him if he and Joseph were swapped. 

There was a ding that felt like lightning breaking through his skull, but it was the elevator, coming to a stop, revealing a large room before him, wrapped in gore, in flesh and blood, braided cables and arteries. 

\---

There was a sound, like an automatic door closing and opening, but with a fine jelly spread between the doors. He looked up, finding an eye, encased in skin, looking around the room, massive and blinking, eyelids sticking slightly. It was the only thing moving within the room, the only thing reacting, looking down at him, rolling wildly, and focusing on the far side of the room. 

Joseph took a step forward, finding the organic filth on the floor as well, wriggling and squelching, open for long stretches of black oil. He did his best not to step into that, to keep moving. 

In the center of the room there was a large tank, though he couldn’t see inside of it. It was wrapped in intestine, in thin strips of flesh. He approached it. There was nothing else for him to look at, aside from the other end of the room. There was a spotlight following him, that eye following him, and he knew that he was being watched even without such an obvious sign of it. 

When he touched the wet tissues wrapping the tank they shuddered and dried, peeling away as if his touch was as poisonous as his blood. He wasn’t terribly surprised. He felt that poison deep within him, burning away at him, making him itch. The skin here was as ruddied as he was. 

The tank was glass and it was filled with water. There were thick iron bolts and edges on it. Under all of the matter was barbed wire and he knew that he’d seen this tank before. Back then, it had Kidman in it, pounding on the glass so that they could get her out before it was too late. It was too late now, the tank was completely full. There was nothing that he could do. 

That didn’t stop his curiosity though. 

He dug into the skin, tearing through it like it was his own, pulling it away in large swaths, leaving it on the ground around him. There was a lot of it. 

Inside of the tank was Ruvik. He’d seen Ruvik undressed before, many times, but he’d never seen him like this. Here he was wrapped in bandages, as if his wounds were still fresh, though they were loose and floating around him, halos around his skin. His eyes were closed for the moment. He looked younger, if that made any sense. 

Joseph took a step closer, trying to see him better, trying to understand. It was a metaphor, he was sure of that, of how Ruvik felt, having his brain scooped out and used to power STEM. His hand went to the glass, gently resting against it. 

Ruvik’s yellow eyes opened and he was gone, stepping through the glass, grabbing Joseph by the throat and pulling him away. He was stepping forward, dragging Joseph where he wanted, and there was so much rage in him, so much more than Joseph had ever seen. Obeying had been safe, had been what Ruvik had wanted. He had never attempted to disobey before. 

“What are you thinking?” Ruvik growled, “You think you can just do whatever you wish?”

Joseph was clawing at him, was trying to get away from him. He couldn’t do much, he never could, but he could reach Ruvik, who’s body was still acting like it was underwater, push at his face, claw at his arm, try to get away. Ruvik acted like a wall, unmovable. 

“Are you trying to leave? Abandon me? Leave me behind?” Ruvik’s teeth were grit, his anger tangible. “Have you forgotten who is in control?”

\---

There was something in the middle of the room but there was no way that Stefano could see it. He could hardly see anything. He could hear though, someone talking, someone angry. He moved forward, stepping forward, getting closer, trying to hear, trying to see. He felt like he was moving like a drunkard. He felt like he was slow and cumbersome. 

He made it to the single bathtub in the middle of the room, clutching the side, supporting himself. It was the same kind of tub that he knew that he was in. He wondered where he would go if he climbed inside of it, if he tried to sleep the pain away. 

“I am in control,” came an enraged voice and he was pulled out of his daydreaming, to see the man, cloaked in white rags, standing before him, on the other side of the tub. He was holding onto Joseph, by the throat, the same way that he’d held onto Stefano before. He was whole. He was just himself. “Of this place, of you, you are all mine.”

He couldn’t be killed. He couldn’t be destroyed. He wasn’t here. You can’t kill a ghost. Stefano still reached, grabbed, and aimed Sebastian’s pistol. His aim wavered, his sight blurry, and he knew the consequences of his missing. He couldn’t miss. He wouldn’t. 

“You are nothing without me. You are nothing, in general. Even now, you are just a microbe, some tiny insignificant piece of the whole. It was pity and desire that made you important and that is all.”

Stefano breathed, he tried to steady his aim. He had to get this right. He only had one chance. 

He took it. 

The bullet slid easily through the back of Ruvik’s head, split his teeth and cheek apart with the exit wound, making a bouquet as his brain came out in long streaks, paired with blood, from the hole in the front. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t for the look on Joseph’s face, the strangled bloody look, half crazed, half broken. 

Joseph fell to the floor, sputtering, clutching and scratching at his throat. Ruvik stood above him, his death flickering, his body trying to repair itself. It kept trying to put the pieces back together, like spellcheck trying to find the right word. He was falling apart but he’d figure himself out eventually. Stefano put another bullet in him, flinching and pulling away from the gun as he did, the noise too much for his head. 

Joseph was breathing and clawing at his skin, looking up at Stefano. Stefano wanted to help him up, get him out of there, but he was so tried, so broken himself. He shot Ruvik again and this time his head burst into a million tiny pieces and he fell, flickering out of existence before he even landed. 

Joseph was glaring at him, all rage and terror. He looked as tired as Stefano felt, from his place on the floor. He coughed and there was blood on his tongue, staining his teeth. 

“What did you do that for?” he growled. 

Stefano knelt down before him and wished that he’d be quiet, that he’d be still. It was too loud in here as it was. “My apologies, I assumed you didn’t want him to kill you.”

“You really think you can get me out of here, don’t you? You really think there’s a chance? I’ll tell you what, there’s only one way out of here and I’ve been, just, I’ve been too much a coward to take it.”

He pushed himself forward, tackling Stefano, knocking him easily to the ground. He felt his back hit the squishy floor and the cold dampness seep into his jacket. More than that though he felt Joseph, writhing against him, trying to get to Sebastian’s gun. Stefano snarled, raised his foot, and kicked Joseph away, watching as he went back a few feet before collapsing, curling in on himself. 

“Why would you do that? He was right, you know? He’s always right. What are we supposed to do now?” Joseph sputtered, his voice teetering on a sob. 

Stefano slid the gun away, put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “He was lying, Joseph. Do you not understand that he was of your creation? Merely a figment of your imagination? You are the Core of this place, not him, but you could not believe yourself worthy of such power, so you created someone who could control it, control you. Do you not see yourself as your own master?”

Joseph shook and shook his head and Stefano could hear him crying, though he couldn’t see it, his face hidden behind his arms. He knew that he should show sympathy, that he should make him feel better somehow, but he didn’t know how to do that. It wasn’t in his programming, that’s how Sebastian had put it. 

“You don’t know that. You don’t know him. He created this place. They cut out his brain and made it be in control of STEM.”

Stefano had to fight the urge to roll his eye, as much as he had to fight to stay as part of this conversation. His head was pounding, stealing away his patience and his compassion, what little there was. 

“And Sebastian killed him. Years ago. In Beacon,” he explained. “You have more power than you know, than you allow yourself to know.”

“I… I...” Joseph shook his head again, curling in tight. “I made him up?”

“Yes. I have also created my enemies, the people who have controlled me, in this place. It is easier to not accept responsibility if there is someone else you can thrust it upon, even if you’ve only imagined them.”

He held out a hand. He didn’t try to touch Joseph with it this time. He just held it there as an offer. “Come now, there are people waiting for you.” 

Joseph was slow to look up at him, his eyes red in a different way than the Haunting, and took his hand. 

 

He didn’t know what to believe. He didn’t know what was happening, but Stefano was there and he was trying to explain things and he was helping. He’d killed him. Joseph tried to shake the way that it had happened from his head. Stefano had killed Ruvik. His enemy, his lover, all of the things that he wished he could be and nothing like what he wanted to be, all wrapped in one, seemingly immortal form. Stefano had taken him down with ease. And then he’d said that he never existed in the first place. 

He’d never had power. He’d never been powerful. He’d always needed to prove himself to others, to his superiors. He couldn’t lead himself. And now, Stefano was leading him, by the hand. 

He stopped, looking at it, bathed in red. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

Stefano stopped too, looking at him. His face was a mass of pulsing red veins, snaking over his forehead and cheek, down from under his hair. That looked painful too. Stefano was swaying though, everything in him seemed to hurt. He was raising an eyebrow though, not sure what Joseph meant. 

Joseph slid Stefano’s sleeve up and tried not to gasp, seeing how the barbed wire had dug into the skin, how some of it had encapsulated the intrusion. 

“Yes,” Stefano admitted, “Though it matters not. We need to get out of here, so you can be extracted.”

‘You’. Joseph heard that correctly, filed it away. He didn’t know why Stefano didn’t say ‘we’ but he didn’t ask. He wasn’t Mobius, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have another way out of STEM. He was holding Joseph’s hand tightly, almost as if he though Joseph would pull away, do something stupid. It was the same way that Sebastian had held his hand when he thought that Joseph was going to hurt himself in Beacon.

“You said people were waiting for me. Who?” Joseph inquired, not stopping Stefano this time. 

Stefano opened his mouth, tried to speak, but then there was darkness surrounding them, black tendrils, like oil, spreading over the walls. They were being caged in. There was a shape in the elevator, a girl, a young woman. She was holding a teddy bear at her side. She was both a small child and an adult at the same time. And her anger was directed at Joseph. 

“You tried to hurt me,” Emily spat. “Why would you do that?”

\---

It felt like it took forever for Luci to give up, before she went back, jerkily, to her post. Sebastian moved slowly, from hiding place to the next, making his way from one end of the house to the other.

Once she was gone he waited another half minute, just to be certain that she wouldn’t be returning, before going out through a window. There was still a whole town ahead of him, but he didn’t have to waste time now. He knew exactly where he was going. 

It only took a block though before he saw the dead Haunted. They had been bludgeoned to death, that was easy to tell, and he could hear the thudding of their killers before he saw them. He darted into a bush, hiding among the leaves, and watched as a large creature, like a spider with only four legs, moved through the area. It was crude, made of metal, and it didn’t have joints but it moved like it did anyway. 

He couldn’t fight it. He didn’t have any weapons but, more than that, there were no noticeable weaknesses on it. He couldn’t even tell what it was supposed to be, nevertheless who made it. He knew it wasn’t Amber’s, she was dead and all of her monsters seemed to have died with her. It didn’t fit with Joseph, not that he could imagine, so that just meant the third Core. 

The iron creature wasn’t blind but it wasn’t looking for Sebastian either. It was easy enough to scoot past. He went from building to building, ticking to the shadows. There were more of those iron things, beating the haunted to the ground and stomping on them, but they were smaller, closer to the size of average dogs. They reminded Sebastian of Obscura in a way, in the way that they moved. 

Obscura was more intelligent though. He was able to get around these with ease. It was when the sky blinked that he realized there was more to what was going on than the metal creatures. The sky was made of eyes, searching everywhere. Some of them were so small that they looked like stars. All of the closest ones were staring at him though, knew exactly where he was. 

He froze, expecting something, a shriek, an attack, some monster to come out and get him, but there was nothing. The eyes just blinked again. 

Whoever was looking through them was too busy for him. 

He made his way past the park, through the business district. He kept out of sight. He kept away from the monsters. 

He found the police station without any problems. He also found it without any sign of Stefano or Joseph. It looked terribly like the police station in Krimson City. It looked like home. It wasn’t even locked.


	14. An Apology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just a short chapter this week. I've been doing..... really poorly lately

The black tendrils were like ink, like broken pieces of thick oil paint. They dribbled and dripped where they slid. And then they were growing like massive trees, all at once out of the floor, knocking Stefano and Joseph apart. Joseph was scrambling, heading back towards where he’d dropped his ax. The black tendrils followed him, changing position, almost toying with him. It was obvious from Emily’s face that she wasn’t having fun though. 

Her eyes were red and er black eyeliner was dripping down her cheeks. Her ribbon was skewed and her hair mussed. There were deep, ugly bruises around her neck. 

Stefano dodged one of the tendrils but it wasn’t going for him, none of them had. They were all after Joseph. It seemed that he, as much as he had expected himself to be, wasn’t her target. They were all going after Joseph. 

He rolled, grabbed his ax, and swung, slicing through the stock of one of them, before getting back to his feet and rushing. 

“What are you doing?” Stefano called out, pulling himself towards her. The ground was tacky and slick, sucking at his shoes as he tried to walk. “He is not your enemy!”

She looked at him, the rage prominent in her features. She was intimidating, terrifying, but at the same time, she looked so very very small. 

“He hurt me!” she repeated, “Put his hands around my neck and tried to kill me! I didn’t do anything to him!” 

Joseph sputtered and cried out and Stefano turned to watch as one of the tendrils wrapped around his face, the ooze dripping into his mouth before he cut through it. He was fine. He didn’t need Stefano’s help. He was doing more for him right where he was. 

“He hurt me too,” Stefano explained. “And he’s hurt a lot of other people too, I’m am certain. But that’s not his fault. Emily, what did he look like, when he hurt you?”

Her lip wobbled and she brought her chin up and a wave of tendrils burst from the ground, an onslaught to drop onto Joseph. He couldn’t fight against that but it was more liquid than not and it knocked him prone, onto his back , before he was left to sputter and shake from the strength of it. 

“He looked like a monster. He had all of these spots, like acne, but way way worse, and these big red veins. And his eyes were all weird and yellow.”

“Look at him now, Emily. Does he look the same as that monster?”

She stared at him, at Joseph, as he pulled off his glasses and wiped at his face enough to see. The tendrils were hers, but she didn’t need to focus to control them. They were all a part of her emotions. Her anger was subsiding, getting replaced with confusion. 

Stefano was almost upon her. “There’s something about this place, something terrible, that infects those who are in it. It’s turned Joseph into a monster, quite literally, though he can control it sometimes, can force it to subside. I am the same way, a monster, though mine is far stronger than I could ever dream to be.”

“You do have kind of a scary face,” she admitted. 

He touched the bridge of his nose. The pain in his head was slowly subsiding, but the veins were still there, red and angry and waiting, poison just under the surface to take him over. 

“It hurts, to not allow it to take over,” he explained. “I’m sure that Joseph is equally afflicted by the monster inside of him. He did not want to hurt you, I can promise you that, and neither did I.”

He was so close to her now. A few more steps and he could touch her. 

“You said you killed the real Emily,” she reminded. 

“I said it was my fault that she’s dead,” he corrected. 

“Which means you didn’t kill her.”

He shook his head. Another few steps. “Someone else killed her because they wanted to get to me. Everyone I knew, everyone I cared for, was killed, because he wanted me to to go back to him alone, to have no one else that I could rely on.”

“I can only rely on myself. It’s safer that way.”

He stopped, standing in front of her. “It doesn’t have to be that way. It shouldn’t be that way. People will love you, if you allow them to. You may be the very worst of the worst, you can do such terrible things, but that won’t make you unworthy of love or affection. I never thought that anyone would care for me, but someone was able to reach past what I had become and learned that I still existed.” 

She wiped at her eyes but she was already too late. She was crying all over again. “Would you? Would you love me?”

He smiled, because there was a feeling in his chest towards her, a desire to help her and protect her. It was the same way that he felt for Lily, when they’re relationship was new and she was doing so many things to help him. 

“Yes. Emily, I do.” 

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. She buried her face in his shirt, clutching him, crying. She was so small then, the size of a child, because that was all that she was. Stefano held her tightly and ran a hand down her back, the same way that Sebastian did for him when he had a bad dream. It was comforting. 

“I’m not going to allow anything bad to happen to you again.”

\---

There were tendrils all around him, smashing into him, crushing against him. He was fighting them, pushing against them, cutting and slicing as much as he was racing away. There were so many of them. Everywhere he turned there were more. It would have been so easy to just stop, to give in, to let that thing that lived under his skin to come back and take care of this. 

He didn’t need that. He didn’t need Ruvik. He didn’t need anyone. He was strong enough on his own. He had to realize that, had to believe it. He’d been doing this for so long, been creating things that could take care of him, that he could rely on. He had to rely on himself. 

He cut and sliced his way through, kicking them away as more and more of them tried to cling to him, to wrap him up. They were shoving him down, trying to choke him, to drown him.

He wanted to call out to Stefano, make sure that he was alright. Joseph couldn’t even see him. He could barely see anything, having taken off his glasses since they’d become covered in the black substance. He was blind with them on but he could barely see with them off. 

He pushed himself through and past, seeing just a little bit of blurry light, something blue and purple and the right size for people among it. 

“Stefano?” he called out, trying to make it to the shape. “What’s going on?” 

“Can you stop with those?” he heard Stefano ask, casual and calm. “You don’t really want to hurt him, do you?”

“No,” he heard Emily mutter, “I guess I really don’t.” 

The tendrils spasmed and slid down into the floor, slithering off into where they should have been. Joseph breathed, walking towards them both, only stopping once to couch along the way. He could still taste the ooze in his mouth. 

When he reached them Stefano’s hand was gentle against him, taking his glasses from him and rubbing them clean with his pocket square. Joseph felt a surge of nerves as he watched him, but he was gentle enough and he gave them back quickly. 

“I’m sorry,” Emily said, looking up at both of them. Her face was a mess and Joseph went cold seeing the bruises on her neck, the bruises that he had made. He knew that they were his fault, well the Haunted’s fault, but he shouldn’t have allowed it to take over him. He should have been able to take control. He was the Core. “I didn’t think about you and that monster being different people. I was scared that you weren’t going to be you again. And Stefano, I’m sorry I attacked you with my toys. I was just so angry about her death.”

Her death? Joseph looked at Stefano, squinting, trying to understand what she was talking about. Stefano just nodded though, understandingly, and ran his hand through her hair before pausing as the barbed wire still wrapped so tightly around his wrist tangled in it. 

“It’s alright.” He brought his other hand up to untangle it. “I should have been better at my wording. You took me by a great deal of surprise. I have never met such a great admirer of my work.”

Joseph looked at him, trying to figure him out. He held himself as an eccentric, as someone who truly believed in his work, and he seemed to like the sound of his own voice. Joseph didn’t know what he was, but he wasn’t Mobius. A musician, perhaps. 

“Give me your hand?” Joseph held his out when Stefano had successfully extradited himself. Stefano did so, palm up, though his eyebrow was raised in confusion. Joseph breathed, running his fingers over the wire in Stefano’s wrist. “I’m sorry as well. I didn’t want to hurt either of you. Sometimes it’s just so overwhelming to exist, like my blood is acid in my veins. It’s easier to fall than it is to fight.”

Stefano sucked in a breath as Joseph eased a barb out from under his skin. His fingers tightened and he fought the urge to make a fist, to drag his hand away. Joseph rubbed his palm with his thumb trying to soothe him. 

“I suppose that’s alright then, we are all sorry. Are you sure now is the best time for this?” 

“When else?”

Stefano bit his lip, the red veins on his face pulsing as Joseph pulled another one out of his skin. “How about never? Once we’re out of STEM, these won’t exist anyway.”

Joseph had done this though, he had been the one to bind Stefano in such a terrible way. Stefano leaned forward, breathing shallowly between his teeth. Joseph let their foreheads touch, let the man rest against him. 

“It will feel better once they’re gone.”

“I could barely feel them through the migraine anyway.”

Joseph took a look at him, finally seeing the exhaustion in his frame, in the darkness around his eye, in the hazy way that he was looking at things. 

“This will make it easier, I promise,” Joseph continued to work. 

“Why don’t you just fix it?” Emily asked. 

Joseph looked at her. So did Stefano, though he gave her a bit of a smile. He must have understood what she meant. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a walkie talkie, exactly like the one that Joseph had smashed. He tried to ignore Joseph, who was working on another barb, as he fiddled with it one handed and handed it to Emily.

“Push the button there, would you, mia cara?” he asked. “It will connect you to my friend, Juli, she’ll tell us what we need to do next.”

Joseph’s head shot up and Stefano hissed, pulling away as Joseph yanked too hard. 

“Juli? You mean Kidman?” 

Stefano’s eye was wet, his skin pale and ashy. Joseph tried to distract him from the pain in his wrist, rubbing at his hand and his forearm. Kidman was still alive then. 

He’d had no idea. He couldn’t have. 

“She’s the one who found you,” Stefano explained, “and she’s the only one who knows how to get us out.”

\---

The police station looked the way that it always had, down to the papers. It was the Krimson City Police Department just shoved into a different building in a different city in a different world. The symbol was different and he didn’t recognize the chubby guy with the red nose and white mustache that was heading towards him, but he recognized the rest. 

“You must be one of the operatives!” the man smiled at him and he wasn’t a man, Sebastian knew better. His emotions were a bit better than Luci’s but there was still no life behind his eyes, he was one of the AI. “Been waiting for one of you to come by, we’ve had a lot of problems here, all the way down to murder!”

“You seem really human,” Sebastian took a step back, eyeing the gun on the AI’s hip. He was supposed to look like a police sergeant and, other than his friendliness, he was the perfect combination of all the one’s Sebastian’s ever met. “Are you alright?”

The man just gave him a bigger smile, “Ah, you noticed that huh? They thought Luci was a bit too creepy, not homey enough. Each newer one of us is just a bit more human. They can’t get too close though or we might think for ourselves and that’s no good in this place. So, what can I do you for?”

“I’m looking for the Cores, there’s an instability going on.”

He looked up, as if the police department was more than a story tall. “They’re up there, in the lighthouse, of all places.” 

Sebastian knit his eyebrows. “What lighthouse?”

“And that’s the confusing part, isn’t it? Junction doesn’t have a lighthouse, it doesn’t need one! It doesn’t need a mental hospital either but there you have it.”

Sebastian’s gaze went upward. “You mean Beacon Mental Hospital?” 

The AI nodded, “Yep, that’s the one. I can’t tell you how to get into it, I can’t even see it most days. But I see that figure all in white come out of there sometimes, and all sorts of monsters. In fact, have you been in here before?”

Sebastian stared at him, taken aback. “No. No, why?” 

“I could have sworn I’ve seen you, that’s all.”

There was a flicker of white from the doorway, as if someone ghostly pale had poked his head out to look at them. 

“Are you alone in here?” 

The AI nodded, “Haven’t seen a Mobius operative in quite some time. Everything’s been getting worse by the day since the last time we saw one. There are errors everywhere. And the Cores are making a mess of everything, creating everything that they need, whatever they can use, including people, though they don’t stay people for very long. Something about them’s just not right and they can’t hold onto it enough.”

That white flash again and it was obviously a person, poking their head out into the doorway to catch a glimpse of them. Sebastian put his hand on the AI’s shoulder and moved past him, heading towards the back. “Thank you for the information. You’ve been very informative.”

“No problem, detective.” he replied. 

Sebastian froze for a moment, his mind racing. He hadn’t mentioned that he was a detective. He was supposed to be a Mobius operative anyway. He had his badge on his belt, but it wasn’t all that noticeable, especially since it wasn’t for this department. The AI was learning about him or, at least, this one knew something like him, had recognized him somehow. 

The pale figure was waiting for him, small and picking at his hands, rocking from foot to foot, on the other side of the doorway. 

“Leslie?” 

Leslie looked up at him then shook his head. “No, no, not real. Not real.”

“You look pretty real to me, what are you doing here?” he reached out, easily putting his hand on Leslie’s shoulder. He was exactly the same as he was before, as if no time had passed since the last time Sebastian had seen him in Beacon. 

“Leslie isn’t real. Leslie was made by you, you, you. You made Leslie.”

Sebastian fought the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He could do this. He could always be patient with Leslie. It was the idea that Leslie was acting like Sebastian was the core that had him lose his calm. He hadn’t affected this place, not much anyway. He didn’t think he’d be able to make someone like Leslie so quickly. 

“Leslie, I’m trying to find Joseph and Stefano, do you know where they are?” 

“Up. Up! Up,” Leslie pointed upward and took a hold of Sebastian’s wrist. “Leslie takes Sebastian up there?”

Sebastian gave him a big nod, “Please, I need to find them.”

“Good, good, good.” he started to shuffle off, his grip on Sebastian stronger than expected. He led Sebastian deeper through the back area, past an office that looked a lot like the one that Sebastian and Joseph had shared, and over to a door that shouldn’t have been there. Beyond it were stairs, made of dark wood and Leslie went up them hurriedly, mumbling to himself all the while. 

Sebastian followed, watching as the stairs slowly morphed and changed and a nausea spread through him, a headache forming at the base of his skull, and an itch in his throat. He had been here before. He had been on these stairs. The anxiety of being here again was tearing into him, reminding him of all of the things that went wrong here. 

He had to put one foot before the other, he had to keep moving. Leslie was leaving him behind, which was hard to imagine since the boy didn’t walk very fast. He had to stop, put his hand on the wall, and cough, feel that barbed wire dig at his insides, turn his phlegm into blood.

When he straightened up he found himself directly staring at a mirror, the Haunting within him on the outside, his skin pulled off and one eye bulging, completely exposed, the skin around his teeth taut and grimacing.


	15. Of Course

Fire was in his wrists and cold metal was on his back and he was squirming, trying to move, to get off of the gurney, away from the hands that wanted to probe inside of him, inside of his eye and into the myriad of other holes in his body. He could hear how Paolo laughed, the other sounds that he made as he violated Stefano’s bound form, claiming it as healing, claiming it being good for him. 

The last of the barbs came out and he gasped, shaking, clutching onto Joseph with his blood stained gloves, getting more blood onto his already reddened shirt. He lurched forward, clinging onto him, as his body seized at the pain, not knowing how to remove it. For once the migraine seemed like nothing, the blinding agony in his wrists overpowering it. 

“It’s alright,” Joseph whispered to him, running his hands down Stefano’s back. “It’s over. They’re all out.”

Stefano would have replied but he knew that if he opened his mouth he would be screaming. It was more than the pain but the terror, that tremoring echo that Paolo was still there, was waiting for him, that made him shake so. 

There was a weight against his side and he turned his head, finding Emily beside them, her arms wrapped around them both. She gave him a small smile, attempting to heal, and he reciprocated, finding the company to be of more use than he’d expected. He wrapped one of his arms around her, pulled her close, and he breathed. Paolo was dead. He’d killed him himself. There was no way that he would be here. 

“Juli said that we have to leave,” Emily explained after a while. “I told her where we are and she said that that’s not right. Where we are and where I thought we were don’t match up.”

Stefano straightened up, looking at his wrists. The skin was torn and open and the blood was pooling in the wounds. It only spilled if he turned his wrist one way or the other. “I believe that is the course of this place. I do not believe that it exists correctly within Junction. When I created my own space it was both within and outside of the rest of the world.”

“You created your own space?” Joseph asked, a hand at his elbow, ready to support him if he needed it. He did not deserve such a thing, not from Joseph. Even as ruddied as he was he was still far above Stefano. “We three were the only Cores here.”

Stefano shook his head. “No, no. I was never given such a curse. I have been trapped within a different event of STEM, in which I was given great power, and more own space, to work, if only I were able to gain access to the Core for someone much more powerful than myself.”

Joseph shook his head. Stefano didn’t know what else to say. He was fairly certain from how Lily had spoken of Joseph that he would not be very understanding of Stefano’s kidnapping of her. “That’s not how STEM works.”

“The Core was malfunctioning. She had left her post and her power was coursing through the world in strange and fascinating ways.”

“How did you even get out?”

He almost answered when Emily’s hand slid into his, her grip cold but very very tight, making him wince as the pain sparked once more. She was staring down the way she had come and he slowly followed her gaze. 

There was a boy, walking up the steps, hands clasped before him. His walk was a shambling mess, and everything about him was a twisted thread of nervous energy. He was so pale, and there was damage around his eyes, but he kept his eyes down. Beautiful, even in dirty and oversized hospital garb, at least in Stefano’s eye. His skin would look magnificent spread out and with pools of dark red in the hollows of his form. He looked like a wonderful model. 

“This way!” the boy said in a shaky but sure voice, stopping and pointing the way back to where he’d come. 

Joseph lurched forward, breaking the connection between Stefano and Emily, eyes wide. For a moment Stefano thought that he’d turned again, that there was something terribly wrong with him, but he stopped and stared at the boy in something close to horror. He took off his glassed, shook his head, and scratched at his temple before placing his glasses back on his nose. 

“Leslie?”

The boy looked up at him, his pale eyes large with surprise. He didn’t look afraid of Joseph, or confused by the damage done to his body at all. He gave him a smile and a curt nod and then ran down the stairs once more. 

“This way!”

Joseph was quick to follow him and Stefano and Emily followed Joseph. Her hand was on his again, holding him firmly and he was glad to be grounded so. Her touch was unlike Paolo’s and it was unlike Sebastian’s. Being touched by her reminded him of where he was and the shadows of his past felt less obtrusive. 

“Did you make him?” Joseph called back. 

Leslie was still repeating himself, “this way, this way,” under his breath. Stefano didn’t know much about Leslie, but he did know that he had a compulsion to repeat himself. 

“No,” Stefano admitted, “I’ve never met Leslie! I suppose that means you didn’t make him then?”

Joseph scratched at his neck. “Not intentionally, no. Though I did not intend to make Ruvik either, or the haunted. It all just sort of happened. I guess, in a way, it was my expectations of what STEM would be that helped me fill it.”

Leslie stopped and Stefano watched as Joseph almost ran into him, having enough time for him and Emily to slow to a stop beside them. Leslie’s hands went to his head and he spun slowly as he cowered. “Hurts! Hurts.” 

He’d stopped in front of a door. 

\---

He looked the same as he had, back then, was acting exactly the same as well. For some reason, Joseph had expected him to have aged, at least a little, or for the damage in his skin to have healed a little bit. There was nothing though, no change, and he wondered if that was because he couldn’t imagine Leslie looking any different than he did. 

Leslie was scared though, of something on the other side of the door. Joseph put his hand on the door, pushing it open just a little bit. It wasn’t enough that whatever was on the other side would notice unless it was looking directly at the door, but he could see through the sliver of it. What he saw was a man, in brown pants and a brown vest, his white shirt rolled up at the sleeves. 

Joseph stood upright, looking to Leslie, “Don’t you worry about him. He won’t do anything unless I tell him to.”

“No! No, no, no!” Leslie argued, shaking a bit. “Sebastian. Sebastian!”

Joseph’s face fell. He looked over at Stefano, who looked a little bit confused but very much hopeful. Joseph didn’t get it. Stefano had no way of knowing Sebastian, not unless that other STEM had been with Beacon, though it very much seemed like it wasn’t. The hope quickly fell though and Stefano’s expression because resigned and slightly concerned instead. 

“I know that’s what he looks like but. Well. It’s kind of embarrassing.” Joseph ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. “There was so much happening, so many things coming out of me, from me, and I didn’t know that’s where it was all coming from. I didn’t realize that I was creating things. I didn’t want to make things. So I made him. To protect me.”

Stefano’s features softened slightly but Leslie was still bristled. Emily just looked confused. She was just a kid, as much as she didn’t look like one, and she was the least informed out of all of them. 

He put his hand on Leslie’s shoulder. “I’m not going to let him hurt you.” He knew that it didn’t matter, the Leslie wasn’t real, but he still had the urge to placate him, to make him feel safe. It was a remnant of his time in the police force, he wagered. 

Leslie nodded and calmed, standing still aside from a gentle rocking. “You’ll protect me,” he said, matter of fact. 

Joseph nodded in response. 

There was a shout from the other side of the door. It didn’t sound like Sebastian. Not like his Sebastian. His Sebastian grunted and moaned and sometimes tried to make words, but they always failed. He didn’t shout like that. He never sounded like he was in any sort of pain. There was someone in there with him. Someone who sounded like the real Sebastian. 

He pushed the door open, eyes on the monster. “Down!” he ordered and immediately Sebastian’s shoulders drooped, his aggression starting to fade. He knew how to be obedient. “Down! Sebastian, no biting!” 

“Joseph?” 

Joseph stopped, just standing there, eyes wide. His Sebastian had never said his name. But this wasn’t his Sebastian. His Sebastian was pulling back, nothing more than a well trained dog, ears pinned. His skin had been half ripped off, leaving his eye and teeth exposed. His skin and clothes were just as torn and stained as Joseph’s. He looked like he’d been bathed in acid. 

The Sebastian standing there, clutching his shoulder and staring at him, his expressions changing by the second, was whole, was new. He was wearing the same clothes, the same brown vest and red striped tie as he was all that time ago but his hair was longer, his body and face softer, his beard more filled out. Time had passed for this Sebastian. This Sebastian was real, wasn’t something that he’d created. 

A smile, hesitant at first, and then big and impossible, spread on his face. He was running, releasing his grip on his bleeding shoulder, where the haunted had bit him. He was ignoring how the haunted growled at him now, in warning. He was running towards Joseph. 

Joseph couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. He could just stand there. This wasn’t possible. Sebastian couldn’t have been there. It wasn’t possible. There was no reason that he’d ever come back into STEM, especially not for him. 

But then Sebastian was crashing into him, his arms wrapped around him so tightly, and he could hardly breathe. He could feel Sebastian press against him and he was hot and alive and real, fingers grappling and clutching at him through his vest, his nose buried into his neck, half breathing him in. 

He pulled away, pressed his lips to Joseph’s and it was all over. There was no STEM, there was no audience, there were no fakes and not haunted. There was nothing. There was just this. He had been distracting himself, trying to pretend that he wasn’t affected but now, Sebastian was in his arms and he was in Sebastian’s arms and he was real. He was real and finally, finally, Joseph didn’t feel like he was teetering on the edge. 

He was clutching at Sebastian as well, trying to get closer. It wasn’t possible to get any closer. “What are you doing here?” he asked, the words hard to get out through how tightly he was being held. 

“I came to get you.” Sebastian kissed him again. “I’ve been looking for you for so long.”

“Seb,” Joseph said his name, just to say it. It felt so good to say it, to have it on his tongue. Sebastian felt good to have on his tongue as well and he felt half drunk kissing him again. “I didn’t think you were coming. I didn’t think anyone was coming.”

“Shh. I’m here now. Everything’s going to be alright.”

\---

Joseph was there. He looked awful, like something had been skinning him alive for the past three years, but he was still standing and he was so strong and still so much power held in a physical shell. Sebastian could feel his breath against him, could taste the blood in his mouth, and he could feel the desperation in how Joseph was clinging to him. It wasn’t all lost then. Time hadn’t separated them, nor had trauma. Nothing would keep them apart forever. 

He was happy, to just stand there, to cling to Joseph. He wanted to. He never wanted to let him go. There was a growling in the room though, that thing, himself, that he’d just been fighting with was still in the room. Someone had gasped as well, a human voice, a feminine voice. He couldn’t just hold onto Joseph forever. They had to go. When they got out of there he was going to have to hold Joseph for a long long time. 

He pulled away, just for a moment, but then that moment stretched. “Where’s Stefano?”

“You know Stefano?” Joseph asked, looking around the room. “He was with us, just a moment ago. Emily?”

The girl looked at Leslie, then turned her face to the ground. She was looking at her hands. “I was holding his hand. He saw you two and he got really quiet and still and then he just disappeared. I don’t know where he went.”

“Shit!” Sebastian let go of Joseph, still holding onto his shoulder, as he looked around. Stefano was no where to be seen. Of course he wasn’t. Sebastian bit his lip, he was so stupid. He should have realized. 

“Who is Stefano?” Joseph asked, pressing a hand to Sebastian’s cheek, getting his attention back. 

“You were gone. Myra was gone. I found Stefano and. Shit, he probably hates me for this. He’s, uh,” suddenly he was choking on the word. He’d always trusted Joseph and Joseph had always been so understanding, had been overjoyed when he learned that Sebastian was polyamorous. It had been the three of them and they had been so happy together and Lily had loved having Joseph around too. He thought that Stefano was the same way. He thought that Stefano understood that just because Sebastian loved Joseph, it didn’t mean that he loved Stefano any less. 

“He’s your boyfriend,” Joseph finished. 

He closed his eyes. He breathed. “I wasn’t replacing you.”

Joseph chuckled at that. “No, of course you weren’t. He knew though, didn’t he?”

“About me? Yeah,” Sebastian didn’t add in that he’d never mentioned Joseph to him, that it was Lily that had done all of the explaining for him. Stefano survived off of praise, who should have realized that Stefano would be jealous, would feel like he was the one being replaced. “Jo, I love you so much.”

“I know,” Joseph relied, “and I love you too. I’m not doubting that. You got out, right? You got out of STEM, away from Mobius, but you came back for me. I don’t think I need anymore proof than that.”

Leslie cleared his throat. He was pointing down, down into the rest of the building, to where, it could only be assumed that Stefano had gone. 

“Thanks.” he gave and his hand slid down Joseph’s arm, to his hand. “You think you can walk?”

Joseph raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been doing just fine before you arrived, you know. I think I can keep up.”

Sebastian didn’t look to the girl or to Leslie, he just took Joseph’s hand in his own and went back the way that he came, back to the police department. They were going to catch up to Stefano. He was going to talk to him. They were going to make this right.


	16. Deaf to Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This would have been longer, this would have better, but I had a bit of a break down right at the end.

He moved down the stairs, into a building that he didn’t know. There was a man there, who greeted him kindly, but he couldn’t hear him, he couldn’t respond in kind, he couldn’t respond at all. He flickered and stumbled and stepped forward, over and over again. It didn’t matter that he felt like his skull was wrapped in barbed wire, it didn’t matter that the veins in his skin popped and oozed, it didn’t matter that the pain made him half blind. He could see well enough to step forward, to get away. 

He had known that this was coming, that Sebastian and Joseph would be reunited. He had hoped for it, worked so hard for it. They deserved each other. They deserved to be happy. He had hoped that they would be reunited once they were awake. He had hoped that he wouldn’t have to see it. He wasn’t sure if it was his head or his heart that hurt worse. 

That was the most surprising part of all. He hadn’t expected to feel so much. He thought that heartbreak was just a silly descriptor, a metaphor, not something that he would ever feel. He didn’t feel. He wasn’t made to feel. How could an artist be an artist if he couldn’t feel anything of his own? But he was a psychopath, that’s what they said, what they all said, and he didn’t feel the right things and this wasn’t supposed to hurt so terribly. 

It was raining. He didn’t care. He allowed it to soak into him, tried to focus on it, as he stumbled, not caring that he fell to his knees. They were supposed to wake up outside of here, find each other, and he was supposed to stay here, where he belonged. He had betrayed Sebastian, he knew that Sebastian wouldn’t come back in there, not to find him, not now that he had Joseph. He could just stay in there, alone, and he could create, make marvelous things, of his own once more. 

“Of course, you never really thought that you had a chance.” The Italian caught him off guard, it had been so long since he’d heard someone speak it to him. He forced his eye to focus, past the pain, and he stared at the combat boots that lead to camo pants, fatigues, a long white coat. He swallowed, hard, and cursed himself. “We both knew that he wouldn’t love you, not truly. You weren’t made for them, for such philistines. You were made for me.”

Stefano shook his head and a few of the screws that were holding his skull together shook free. “You’re dead. I killed you myself.”

“Did you?” Paolo reached down, his fingers scraping against Stefano’s jaw in a mockery of care. Stefano froze, bile in his throat, his body suddenly frigid both in temperature and in motion. “Do I feel dead to you?”

“I created you, you came out of my head, my insecurities. I do not desire you’re presence. I do not desire your existence.”

The slap across his face wasn’t much of a surprise, nor did what it bring. He knew Paolo wouldn’t like that. He wasn’t supposed to speak. He was just supposed to be. Something to use, something to play with, something to experiment on. He wasn’t supposed to be a real person. He was so tired of what he was and wasn’t supposed to be. 

“You think that you can say such things to me?” Paolo’s hand was harder on his jaw and he lifted Stefano to his feet, turning his head one way and then the other. Stefano was glad that it was raining, was glad that he was alone. He was alone. He was. He had shot Paolo in the head. They had left his corpse in a bathtub, among hundreds of others, to rot away. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t real. “You think you are above me?”

Stefano waved him off, knocking his hand away. “And what can you even do to me? Torture me? Rape me? No, you can do nothing that I do not will. You are a part of my subconscious, your existence alone is my attempt to punish myself. Gabriella punished me for forgetting her, for being such a depraved mess and now you are here to punish me for the mistake of thinking that I am important, that I am deserving of such silly things as love! You never gave me love, you just tried to control me! And I never want to be controlled again.”

“Is there anything that you can do about it though, Valentini?” Paolo’s hands went to his wrists, instead of his face, and he examined them, the cuts, the deep set grooves from the barbed wire. “The smallest of droplets can carve into marble, what makes you think you are stronger than that? Any experience you have worms it’s way inside of you, makes a hole, and then you are something new.”

It was true, it was something that he already knew. That was the only reason that Paolo was able to say it. He knew how this place worked, he knew better than anyone else alive. He was the closest to an expert on STEM to exist. He’d never even realized that. He didn’t want that. He just wanted things to be normal. He wanted things to be the way they had been before he’d even met Theodore, even though he knew that would mean that he would have never met Sebastian. At the moment, he wished that he hadn’t, because then, he never would have had to see him with someone else. 

“You thought you could keep him, didn’t you,” the hands were soft, kind, lying. He wanted to believe in the lie. He felt so close to breaking. He wanted to break. He was tired of holding himself together. “You thought that he would love you. Pathetic little thing you are, thinking that you could be welcome in someone’s life for so long. It was pity that let you stay in his home, in his bed. It was understanding, that you just needed guidance, control, and a purpose, that made me take you in.”

“You’re lying,” Stefano said, but it was half hearted. He couldn’t find it in him to fight Paolo. He couldn’t argue with his own mind, with things that he already knew were true. 

Paolo took his chin again and tilted his face upward so that he could kiss him. “You know that I’m not.”

He could feel himself shatter. 

\---

Joseph raced down the stairs, picking up speed, passing Sebastian and taking the lead, aside from Leslie. Leslie wasn’t especially fast but he was in the way and, even though Joseph knew that he wasn’t really there, Joseph couldn’t imagine getting rid of him. Without killing him, he doubted that he could just will Leslie away. He could be useful too. 

“What’s wrong with Stefano?” Emily asked, trailing behind them, still holding onto the radio. “Why did he run off?”

Sebastian glanced back at her, uncertainty obvious in his features. They didn’t have time for him to explain all of the nuances of his sexuality right then. They didn’t know what Stefano could be up to. Joseph wasn’t sure what it was either that had made him run off, but he was fairly certain he could guess. Stefano had never mentioned Sebastian; there was probably a reason for that. 

“Sebastian and I were together, a long time ago,” he explained, finding it difficult to do while running, but easier than Sebastian, “and then we were separated. Sebastian started dating Stefano and, I guess Stefano wasn’t ready for us to catch up.”

“Are you cheating on Stefano?” Emily asked, a bit of poison in her voice. It could become much much worse.

Sebastian shook his head. “No. No, I love. Them both. He knows. I like more. Than one person. At a time. I thought. He was okay. With that.”

A stitch in his side and he was trying to rub it out while they ran. 

They were able to spread out a bit, get around Leslie, once they were at the bottom of the stairs. There were desks then, more obstacles, but at least they were in clear lines. The AI was standing in the middle of it, hands on his hips and confusion on his face, looking out through the glass door. 

Joseph gave Sebastian a quick glare. “Obviously he wasn’t. He may of thought that he was. But he seems to have a jealous streak.”

“Yeah. I should have. Guessed that.”

“Which way did he go?” Joseph called out. 

The AI turned, the confusion turning to relief, as he saw the pair. He’d always recognized that Joseph was in the police force, at the very least, even though it had been so long and he doubted he could ever pass as a police officer, or a detective, in his current state. Still, he was glad that someone was there to solve the mystery. 

“The man I the suit? Well, detective, he went to the right, he looked mighty strange though, face a mess of veins and blood dripping down. He kept flickering too, vanishing and reappearing. Doesn’t know what his legs are for, I guess.”

Joseph gave him a nod of thanks and they went around him, their mass making him take a few steps back, out of politeness. 

“Well, now, didn’t think I was going to be seeing double!” the AI murmured and Joseph almost stopped, looking back. 

Sebastian was a bit behind them, but he was still following, his mangled body not running well but still well enough. He didn’t have to worry about exhaustion, not like the real one, and he was carrying Joseph’s ax. 

“Sebastian no! Go away!” Joseph ordered. 

Sebastian looked hurt, oddly, though he only had the one eyebrow to do so with. The real Sebastian just looked confused before he turned and saw the Haunted replica. “Why. Did you. Even make. That thing?”

“You weren’t here, were you?” Joseph all but growled. 

The Haunted didn’t do as he was told. He kept following behind them. Leslie glanced at him and covered his ears, turning his attention to the ground. “Two of them. Two. One bad one good. One good. Good. Good. Keep it together Leslie.”

the mass of them pushed through the door and out into the street beyond. They couldn’t tell from inside, somehow, but it was pouring rain out there. Joseph wanted to bask in it. He hadn’t felt rain in so long. He’d hardly even been outside in his entire time here. They didn’t have time for that though. Sebastian was leaning heavily against him, trying to breathe, as they peered into the right side of the street. 

“I can’t see him,” Sebastian panted. 

Joseph gave his hand a squeeze, partially in solidarity, partially to stop himself from scratching at his skin. There was a sound in the air, a tension, and it made his skin crawl. It made him itch. 

Sebastian stopped, his hands on his knees, to breathe, for a few seconds. There was a flicker of yellow, just for a moment, and then there was nothing, amongst the rain. Joseph’s hand was on Sebastian’s back, as he looked at it, tried to see if it happened again, if there was a way that he could trace it. Emily didn’t care though, she just ran into the rain, towards it. She didn’t care how Joseph yelled after her. 

Leslie hurried after her, though he looked back at the pair of them. “Hurts! Hurts.” he pointed in the direction of the flash. “It’s him. He’s not himself or he is and it hurts.”

“The light was Stefano?” Joseph asked. 

Leslie nodded and hurried into that direction. 

“Sebastian?” a woman’s voice, Kidman’s voice, came from Sebastian’s side. He pulled himself upright, picked it up and held it between them. 

“I’m here.”

“He’s having another seizure, a worse one than before,” she explained. “What’s going on? I thought you were all getting out!”

“We are! It’s just, he ran off, I don’t know why. But we’re going after him. We’re going to get him back.”

“Do you want me to get Joseph out of there?”

He looked at Joseph then and Joseph felt it in him, that urge. He wanted to say yes. He wanted to go. He wanted to be free of this place, so badly. He had to get out of STEM. 

“Joseph!” Emily cried out in the distance. 

“No,” Joseph pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “We’re going together. All of us.” 

\---

He took Joseph’s hand, clutching it like something precious, because it was. His heart was swelling, enough to break through the pounding of his head. Joseph was there for him, was there for Stefano. He was willing to make this work. Stefano was a mess and he should have expected this. He was so reliant on praise, of attention, Sebastian should have known that he wouldn’t of handled Joseph well, even thought he knew about him. 

He was having a seizure. He knew that that meant. Stefano had turned. They didn’t have time to stand around. 

Feeling stronger, he started to run again, trying to find him, and there was a whirring, that terrible sound of tinnitus, starting to form in his ears. Something was trying to take him too. Joseph had a hand to his ear, he was hearing it too. They had to be strong, the had to fight it. They were running, side by side, on the same tightrope, and they couldn’t waver. Sebastian squeezed his hand, supportive for both of them. They were together now. Nothing was going to hurt them now. 

Leslie was on the ground, not moving but slowly fading away, his body burning and blackening and turning to ash. A knife had gone through his collar and down through his stomach. He was looping, of course, slowly falling as the blood spilled out of him in an arch of red. 

“Shit.” He breathed. 

Emily was cowering, darkness swirling around her, dark shapes growing out of the floor. She was talking, but it was clear that Stefano couldn’t hear her. He couldn’t hear much of anything. He was holding his camera still, though he lowered it quickly enough, and looked to Sebastian and Joseph. 

He wasn’t alone either. Behind him was a visage, made of flame and smoke, of sand and camouflage. 

“Shit.”

“Stefano,” Paolo crooned, reaching over Stefano’s shoulder to run a hand over his bloody cheek, angling his head so that he could see Sebastian and Joseph, “Would you look at this? Your so called lover, with your replacement, come to put you down. You could make such beauty out of them, could you not? Immortalize them in a mockery of the love they promised you?”

Stefano smiled, though it didn’t reach his eye. The veins in his skin had burst and blood was running down him, his skin almost completely covered in it, and it soaked through the navy of his suit, dyed his shirt. There was more blood on him than there ever possibly could have been inside of him. 

“Stefano, don’t listen to him!” Sebastian called out, knowing that it wouldn’t be enough, it was never enough. There was a darkness inside of Stefano, a depression, that he was much more willing to take into himself than the truth. “I’m here. I’m not going to leave without you. None of us are. I’m not replacing you. I can’t replace you.”

“Sebastian Castellanos,” Stefano said and, even now, the way that Stefano said his full name put a shiver in his spine. “You have come, as was expected, but too late. There is nothing that you can give, aside from your flesh, that I could possibly desire. You are persistent in your attempts but you could never please me in the way of other’s, in the joy of creation. No, I shall create something beautiful from you, make your fear and pain.”

He clutched Joseph’s hand tighter, pulling him close. There was a pressure on his brain, a ringing in his ears. Joseph was bent over, coughing as quietly as he could into the crook of his arm. There was blood in that cough, Sebastian didn’t need to guess. 

“Look at me, Stefano! I’m not afraid of you! Neither of us are! I’m not going to let you hurt us, or anyone else. We’re going home. You don’t need him.”

Paolo half draped himself over Stefano’s back and Stefano leaned against him, Paolo’s caress leaving smudges of black on whatever skin was unblemished by blood. He was smiling. He was winning. He wasn’t even living, wasn’t real, and he felt that he was winning. It made Sebastian sick. 

“What are you waiting for? You have an audience waiting, a beautiful young fan, you don’t want to disappoint her, do you?”

Stefano pulled out his knife, looking it over casually. “Two slabs of flesh, but which one to carve first? Oh, to have more time, but there are other things that need to be done, and while you may not fear me now, you will by the time I am done with you.”

He started to walk towards them, flickering with blue and yellow light, like there was a hint of flame in his power, growing stronger as he shifted and drew closer. Sebastian looked around, looked for anything but he had nothing, no weapons, nothing to defend himself with, nothing to defend Joseph with. Joseph couldn’t even defend himself, not in such a state. He looked like he was about to lose himself. 

“Am I here?” Stefano asked as he flickered right in front of them, knife raised. He vanished then, just as easily, “Or here?”


	17. Fists and Lips

The skin was failing, too many cuts, too many tears, to make it of any real use, but there was a delicious tension of terror behind the man’s eyes. Stefano found that the truly inspiring piece. He may not be able to use the body, but the fear was such a drive. And Joseph was truly his first target, as he had felt such a terrible hurt because of him. It was rare that his emotions led his aim, but for this once, he would allow it. 

He brought the knife down, ready for that epiphany of of claret, but something else moved first, something fast and wild and hideous. It shoved itself between Stefano and his aim, an ax thrown up to parry his sharp edge. He growled, taking a step back, taking a long look at the infiltrator. 

Sebastian was standing to the side, not knowing what to do, acting the fool. This man, if it were a man at all, was too damaged to be Sebastian, to be of any use. Its face was a twisted lump of flesh on one side, teeth and eye exposed and leaking. Hair was matted and missing. All of him looking like he’d been half burned away. 

He tsked at it. It was no real threat, just an annoyance. There was no beauty in it. It was just a distraction. He had his composition all neatly planned and this smudge was not applicable. 

It swung at him, too far away, no aim, no skill. It was nothing to be concerned with. It was nothingness. Stefano scoffed. The two men were drawing together behind it, but they had no weapons, no way to stop him. They didn’t look like they were willing to do anything aside from cower. Perfect. They were making this easy for him. 

He stepped forward, to the other side of the copy, and stabbed his blade deep into its throat. 

“Sebastian!” Joseph cried out, as if this thing was worthy of such a name. 

He glanced at the soiled detective, but his attention was back on his victim in a moment, watching as the blood, too dark for his liking, spurted and slid down his skin in a mockery of humanity. 

It was not enough though, as the thing turned on him, swinging more, slicing his suit, his skin, open, making a beautiful line of red through his scars and hair. 

Stefano stepped forward, out of range, closer to his actual targets. He wiped at the blood with his fingers, licked them clean, and reveled in the taste of his own fluids. It had been a lucky strike. He was fast and clever, but no one could predict the chaos of a mindless animal. 

“Stefano!” Sebastian was calling to him and he ignored it, the man didn’t know what he was doing, he never did. He was a fool who could not understand, could not appreciate, what Stefano was creating. “You don’t have to do this! Look at me!”

He couldn’t look at anyone, the copy was rushing him. He side stepped it’s predictable attack, grabbing it by the hair as its momentum carried it past him. His grip was firm and he tugged, jamming his knife into the things throat over and over again. He could hear Joseph screaming. He could feel dark cool blood spraying onto him. He could her Emily vomiting and- what was he doing? Why was he doing this? He wasn’t like this, not anymore. He was fixed. He didn’t want to hurt them. The whole point was to not hurt them. 

The head came off in his hand and finally the body, oozing, fell to the ground. There was so much noise, not music but screaming. They didn’t understand. He would show them. Art did not need to make noise, a sculpture had no need for a tongue. Soon, they would all be silent. 

Sebastian, the real one, was running towards him now and he grinned, feeling his own mouth like a razors edge, the blood on his lips warming from his own heat. Sebastian was a mess, his eyes wet and his attention all on him. That’s how it was meant to be. Sebastian shouldn’t of had his attention on anyone else. Just Stefano and his art. 

Sebastian went low, grabbing the ax from his double’s grip. He stayed away, just a bit, from Stefano, his eyes wide, not afraid but hopeless, his adrenaline spiked. Hopeless wasn’t what he wanted but it was still a very strong emotion and it drove him to want even more. 

“Look at me, Stefano, this isn’t you. We’ve done this before, you know this isn’t you.”

He spun the knife in his hand. He looked Sebastian over. He was brave, though he shouldn’t have been. There was no point in bravery. “Perhaps not, but this who I am meant to be, what I desire. To be an artist, with nothing to hold me back.”

“But there is something holding you back!” Sebastian argued, pointing the ax to their right, to Paolo, who was watching with his arms crossed, a small smile gracing his lips. “He’s dead! You killed him! But you brought him back! Why would you ever do that?”

“An artist has need of an audience!” Stefano started to walk towards him, brisk, “Why not one who can appreciate what I have to show?”

\---

Joseph couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t look away from the blood spilling out of Sebastian’s throat. Stefano was holding onto his head still, as if it was nothing, as if he wasn’t doing anything wrong. There was something disgustingly wrong with him. Sure, Sebastian wasn’t real, Joseph had created him as his protector, as someone to exist in this space with him, but Stefano didn’t even pause, didn’t seem to care that it looked so much like the real Sebastian. 

He’d killed Leslie too. He was gone now, his body having burned away, but the blue square was still there, a flicker of blood looping inside of it. For a moment Joseph was frozen, realizing that he wasn’t as powerful as he thought he was, that he could make things out of his subconscious, but Stefano was on a completely different level than him.

“Joseph!” 

His attention was finally dragged away, back to Emily. She was clutching onto someone and he her, as she had just thrown up from the scene before her. The man was weak, body gushing, his face a mess of ooze, something akin to melting flesh. He’d been torn apart and put back together, and he could hardly stand on his own. 

A man, Paolo from what Sebastian had called him, just watched coldly, that small smile never leaving his face. Joseph didn’t know who he was or what he was doing there, but there was something unsettling about him. Something told him that this was all Paolo’s fault. 

He made his way to Emily, the shrieking, piercing sound making him topple half way there. Sebastian was groaning behind him, the conversation that he was trying to hold with the monster that Stefano had just been interrupted. It made him dizzy, deepened the chasms on either side of the tightrope that he lived on. He wanted to fall, he wanted to turn. The sound was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It made him want to be the monster. 

His face and body may have been destroyed, coming back in a similar way as Sebastian’s had in Beacon, when he’d used one of those syringes, but he was still strong enough to push himself away from Emily, to try to keep Joseph away from her, to pull out his camera to use as a weapon. Through all of the damage, Joseph could see Stefano’s features. He’d created Sebastian to protect him. He knew that Emily had done the same with someone, he’d always assumed it was her father, but his features had shifted and changed into Stefano’s. 

Joseph put his hands up as the man collapsed to one knee, breathing hard, hardly breathing, just sucking in air. “What are you?”

“Him? ...Me? I’m... hers that-’s all ...I. know.” he choked out, his voice little more than a wheeze. 

“A lovely specimen,” Paolo said, suddenly there, his hand on the false Stefano’s jaw. The fake screamed at the contact, as if it was physically painful for him to be touched by Paolo and Joseph shuddered, eyes wide, his fear gone. In that moment it was replaced, completely with something that he hadn’t felt in years, something that he felt only in the real world. It was a feeling that he had on the force, on the job, when he had to protect someone. 

There was no tightrope. There was no fall. There was no monster. He knew what he was and he knew what he had to do. His fist connected with Paolo’s nose and he fell back, releasing the copy to stumble and grab a hold of his face as it gushed. 

“What did you do to him?” Joseph growled as he threw himself against Paolo, pushing him to the ground and wailing on him. He had seen battered spouses, beaten children, broken pets, and he had no doubt that Stefano was akin to them, that Paolo was one of so many that he had been too late to stop. Homicide was about killers, not abuse, but he’d seen it, he’d dealt with it, and so many killers were just abusers who had gone too far. 

Paolo’s skin felt like sand and his blood splattered like water on the beach and he wasn’t human, he was just a figment, but he kept throwing his aching fists into the mound of flesh before him. He could feel his bones protest as they connected with Paolo’s cheek bones, his jaw, but he didn’t stop. Even as Paolo gripped his thighs, tried to push him off, he didn’t budge. He just kept punching, kept going until Paolo stopped moving, until he couldn’t see him breathing anymore. 

He pulled himself off, shuddering, the anger dripping off of his knuckles, the need to avenge all of those that had fallen pushed aside, completed. He jumped when Stefano’s double touched him, a hand on his shoulder, and then more, his arms wrapping around him. He was whispering thanks, in a long list, the words jumbling and fumbling over each other. 

Joseph turned to him, saw how much gratitude was in his damaged face, and he wondered how much of this Stefano was the real Stefano. He grabbed him in response, pulling him close, and he could feel his gasp and flinch and melt against him. 

“It’s okay,” Joseph promised, “It’s alright. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

Emily fell to her knees beside them, wrapping her arms around them both. “They weren’t connected before.” She explained as her Stefano buried his face into her neck, as he sputtered and wrapped an arm around her, as needy for her as she was for him. “Before Stefano got here he looked like what I pictured Stefano to look like. He changed when Stefano got here and then he got hurt, really really badly. I don’t know what to do, how to fix him.”

Joseph turned his attention back to the copy, “This connection, would it be possible for the real Stefano to feel things through you?” 

The copy tilted his head, letting his hair fall over his face more, hiding himself away. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Can you try?”

He bit his lip. He nodded. 

\---

It was different from before. Sebastian wasn’t expecting his words to get through to Stefano, they hadn’t before, but he still had to try. Everything he said was turned on its head though, questioned, and Stefano’s voice was that of someone else. It was his accent, his words, but with an obsessive possessiveness that he’d never possessed in the real world.

He knew how to break through before. He had to get close, had to do something that Stefano would never have expected. The words were something that he expected, even as he swore that they were lies, and any sort of physical touch wouldn’t work either. He had dragged Stefano out of this with a kiss before, but there had been so many kisses between them since then, he couldn’t imagine anything that he could do would affect him now. He didn’t want to hurt Stefano either and pain was what he expected. 

“I’m not going to leave you here!” Sebastian grit his teeth, promising. “I don’t know why you thought that I would!”

“Have you not realized that this is where I belong? Here I can created what ever I desire, I can build edifices of my own imaginings! You have tried to shape me, to sculpt me, into what you have desired for so long. But no more, now I am my own man, now I am as powerful as I could ever possibly be.” 

He threw up the ax, blocking another swing of the knife. He was going to have to do something, anything, but he didn’t know what. He elected to run, just to get himself some distance, some time to think. He was sprinting before Stefano could comment on it, his chuckle a deep gravelly thing that unsettled him deep in his bones. He didn’t have a direction, no plan, so he just went straight, towards Paolo. 

Paolo was on the ground. He wasn’t moving. Sebastian ran towards him anyway. He wondered if Paolo would be enough to distract Stefano, to make him come back. He definitely hoped that it was. 

He tumbled as pain burst in his shoulder, as he fell, a hand to his back, feeling where Stefano’s knife had landed. He could hear the camera prime. His arm was numb, even as he supported himself with it, grabbing the hilt and pulling. He had an ax, but he needed a better weapon. The less that Stefano had the better off he would be. 

He could hear the camera prime. He pulled himsel fto his feet, a weapon in either hand. He knew that he couldn’t escape Stefano’s aim with the lens. He just had to get to some answer before he pulled the trigger. 

“I don’t want to hurt you!” he called out. 

“Hurt me?” Stefano crooned, “You couldn’t if you tried. Huh.” 

The camera didn’t click. There was no flash. Sebastina looked over his shoulder, saw how Stefano was standing there, clutching his head. He was fighting it, he was trying to come back. Sebastian could see it, as he slipped his camera back into wherever it was that he kept it, the confusion on his face, the wetness of his eye. He was touching his lips. He was trying to make sense of something. 

Joseph was kneeling next to Paolo and there was someone with him, his hands were on his shoulders, holding him still, as he pressed their lips together. It was that strange thing, that copy of Stefano, who’s flashes were all slightly wrong, and had helped and hindered Sebastian so many times. His face was still ruined, his body less of a mess than it had been but he still didn’t look good. 

“It’s okay,” he heard Joseph whisper as eh pulled away from the copy. “I know you’re scared, that you think I’m replacing you. I know you must think that Sebastian can’t love you, if he loves me, but he does. We’re going to get out of here, you’ll see. We’ll all be so happy together.”

Of course. Of course it couldn’t have been Sebastian to get Stefano back. He wasn’t what had driven Stefano away in the first place, not really. It was Stefano’s own thoughts, his jealousy, that Joseph was getting between them. He changed his direction, just a little bit, and made it to Joseph. Emily was at his side, watching with big eyes. She could help too. 

“You figured it out,” Sebastian interrupted and the false Stefano turned to him with an expression of relief and confusion. “You figured out how to get him back, Joseph. I could kiss you!”

“Not right now,” Joseph argued, running his hand along the copy’s jaw, watching as he nuzzled. “I’m a little busy.”

“I know. Could you do that to the real one though? This is working, a bit, but it’s not strong enough.” Sebastian took Joseph’s spot, pushing him gently to the side, using both hands to slide through the ooze, brought his forehead to rest against the copy’s and just breathed for a moment, catching up on what he’d lost from running. “Emily? You have a connection to Stefano, could you help Joseph out?”

She nodded and pulled herself to her feet. Stefano was still standing there, perplexed, trying to shake through the new sensation, the feeling of the connection between the two of them. It was the only opening that they had. 

“He thinks... he’s. doing the right... thing,” the copy explained. “Betr.ayed. You. Hurt… you. You can’t… want him now. I- he. He thinks you… deserve each. Other. Should lea. Leave. Him. Behind...”

“I’m not going to do that.” Sebastian explained, kissing his forehead. It was colder, a bit more plasticy, but it was close enough to the real thing. “He didn’t betray me and I’m not replacing him. I love them both. He knows that, somewhere, and I’m so sorry that this turned out the way it did.” He pressed a kiss to the false Stefano’s lips, and it was soft at first but soon the copy was gripping at his wrists, holding him there, kissing back with all teeth and need and hope, digging his tongue into Sebastian’s mouth, opening himself up for Sebastian in turn. 

This Stefano was so needy. But it wasn’t this Stefano. Sebastian realized. It was the real one, this was just a proxy who didn’t feel a need to hide how needy he really was.


	18. Chapter 18

Stefano felt like he was drowning, like he was in that space, where everything was white and the hands were reaching up for him, grabbing him. Paolo was dead, again, but that didn’t matter, Paolo wasn’t needed. He was a symbol, a catalyst, of what Stefano knew to be true. Or had thought to be true. Because now he didn’t know. 

His knife felt heavy in his hand but he raised it anyway. Joseph, his materials his flesh, his enemy, was approaching him, and he held such composure , such confidence, that it was like he was sculpting himself. The cuts and the scars were of his own making, his own terrible design, and he was who he was for them.   
Sebastian had that thing on his lips and Stefano could still feel it, the weight of being kissed without any lips upon him. 

He took a step back. His hand was shaking. “What have you done?” he growled, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. Joseph was supposed to be terrified, not him. He had so much work to do. 

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Joseph asked, his hand on Emily’s shoulder. She was more afraid that Joseph but still she stood firm. “You can feel how much Sebastian loves you, how much he wants the three of us to try to be together. You don’t have to be with us, we can figure out how this works, just not here. Come with us, back to the real world. We can figure this out together.”

He put his free hand to his lens, feeling it buzz in his skull. It was controlling him, but it was controlled by him. He was the artist. He was the creator. It only existed because he allowed it. It was ugly and garish and he wanted it to be, wanted to tear them apart until they were a physical manifestation of his pain. 

Lips were against his, like a ghost, cold and calming; claiming. He shuddered. He could feel pressure on his heart, on his arms, as if he was being embraced. He could smell Sebastian’s cologne, even though he was still on the ground, so far away, embracing and kissing that thing that looked so much like him. 

“You don’t understand!” Stefano cried out but he was the one who didn’t understand. He couldn’t admit to that though, not to them, not to himself. “I am not what you think I am! I am this!” he gestured to what he had become. “I am an artist and you will become my art!”

“You are a man!” Joseph interrupted, getting closer. Stefano couldn’t stop himself from backing away. It was either that or turning to run. “A human being! And you are loved. I know that’s hard sometimes, just to feel worthy of someone’s attention, but you haven’t lost it just because Sebastian’s attention is split! He hasn’t stopped loving you because I’m back in his life.”

“Well he should!” Joseph stopped. Emily’s eyes were wide. Stefano wiped at his face, pulling some of his hair away to expose his lens. He could feel redness and heat in his nose, around his eye. He knew how broken he sounded. “You do not know what I have done! I have betrayed him, with my actions, I have almost killed him, and you as well, I would render you into pieces in order to get what I desire! I am unworthy of redemption!”

Joseph moved, releasing Emily, and he was on Stefano. He was fast. He didn’t care about the knife. He didn’t care about the words. His arms were wrapped around Stefano and he was nuzzling against him. Stefano was stiff, flexed, his entire body ready for a fight, but Joseph was so relaxed, as if he knew that he was in no danger. He was though. Stefano was dangerous. He didn’t deserve such trust. 

“You are. I saw you, running for your life, and I was there when you let this power enter you. You thought you wouldn’t survive without it. You were probably right. But you have to take responsibility, you can’t rely on something else to make decisions for you. I allowed Ruvik to control me, and you helped me take control of myself. I’m here now. I’m not going to let go. I’m going to help you too.”

“No,” Stefano argued but it sounded weak, even to him. Joseph brought a hand up, his fingers cold through the holes in his gloves, and rested it on the unmarred flesh of Stefano’s cheek. He didn’t know how to fight. 

A hand took his and grasped it firmly. It wasn’t Joseph’s though, it was Emily’s. She was looking up at him. She’d always been looking up to him. He breathed. He tried to control himself. 

“You said you’d love me, no matter what,” Emily reminded him. He had said that. He was something, in between himself and himself and he wasn’t sure who was winning now but he remembered telling her that. He remembered meaning it. “Same goes to you. I don’t care about your past. As long as you’re working to be better. As long as you’re the you that I know, instead of hiding behind this thing, then I’ll love you too.”

Stefano was about to argue that, was about to say something, but he couldn’t. He could hardly even think. Because Joseph’s hand was on his cheek and the other was cradling the back of his head and he was pushing forward, swallowing Stefano. He could feel them both, in that moment, both Joseph and Sebastian, kissing him, drawing him in, trying to make him understand that they were both there for him, that he was worthy of their love. He felt himself snap and fall and he was being supported, being caressed, allowed to exist and not be nothing. 

\---

Stefano’s lips were smooth, the skin of them warm and alive and textured differently than Sebastian’s. When kissing Sebastian, Joseph could feel the bristle of his beard, the slight gap from skin tissue, and how soft and yielding he was, even when his lips were chapped. Stefano was bare faced and the ridge of his lip line was sharp, the small scar under his bottom lip unfelt. Kissing Sebastian was like melting, was like falling into a deep embrace, like being pushed and pressed, pressure all around him. Kissing Stefano was strange, foreign, but a welcome sensation, making Joseph’s mind race, his hands want to travel all over him, learn him. 

Stefano was kissing him back, mouth falling open to let him explore. It wasn’t love, not yet, but it was an invitation to try. He was open to this, as outlandish as the idea had been to him. Joseph took that as a good sign, releasing his cheek to run that hand down Stefano’s throat, down over his shoulder, and to his waist, pulling their waists flush together. 

“That’s gross!” Emily complained and Stefano chuckled against Joseph’s lips, even as she covered her eyes. She was still a child, after all, even though she looked so little like one. 

A hand was pressed against his back though, the small of it, pulling him closer, and there was another hand on his jaw and a third hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes, pulling away from Stefano so they could both look over at Sebastian. He was standing there, the same small smile on his lips that he usually had from kissing till he was breathless. His arm was wrapped around the doppleganger, who was leaning heavily against Sebastian’s shoulder, shuddering. “Mind if I cut in?”

“You guys!” Emily groaned. “Don’t we have to go?” 

Stefano wasn’t hesitating though, ignoring the copy of himself leaned up against Sebastian, kissing him hard, heavy, and Joseph’s heart was panged with a small shock of jealousy. He didn’t need to be jealous though, he was going to have many opportunities to kiss them both. 

Joseph laughed but joined her, taking the radio from her. It was still tuned into Kidman’s frequency. “Kidman?” 

“I’m here. You guys okay?” her voice was a little bit fuzzy on the other side and all of the questions he had to ask her buzzed in his head. Those could wait though. They could be safe before he asked. 

“We’re okay, yeah. How do you want to do this?”

“I’m going to need your coordinates and then I’m going to have to pull you out, one by one.” 

He nodded, glancing over at Emily. “I want Emily out of here first. She’ll be in the system under the name of John Hastings.” Emily stuck her tongue out at the name. “Women and kids right?”

“Right,” she sounded hesitant, as if she wanted to argue against the joke. “Where are you?”

Joseph turned, looking for the street names. “Erin and…. Cartwright.”

“Got it. Just a moment.” 

Joseph looked back at Emily, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, this is going to be really jarring, but we’re all going to wake up now. You’re going to be okay but you’re going to be a lot shorter. It’s going to take some time to get used to.”

She smiled, “I’m going to be a lot more different than just shorter. You’re going to be right after me, right?”

“Of course. We’re all getting out of here.”

She started to glow then, like a bright light against a mirror. Joseph raised a hand, covering his eyes, to block out the brilliant light. It was consuming her, but she did not scream, did not react in any way, just allowed herself to be taken, woken up, free of this place and the dream of what she would be. 

“You’ve affected this place,” Stefano shuddered as he explained it, but it wasn’t Stefano, it was the copy. Somehow, he was still alive, even with Emily gone, but he didn’t have much time left. There were patches of black on him, like mold, and they were growing fast, revealing a skeleton of cast iron before that too faded away. “This place is supposed to have three cores. It now only has one. It’s all going to be unstable. They aren’t going to like that.”

“What?” Sebastian tried to hold onto him but his body was crumbling and breaking apart, the pieces falling down like ashes in a dust devil. “Who’s not going to like that?”

Joseph had a chilling suspicion and he turned back in the direction that they had come from. He saw the door to the police station tear open, the sheriff tear out into the road. He was twitching, his body too fast, shoulders and head spasming in directions that didn’t make sense. He walked like he was going at a normal speed but he was actually moving at a sprint. There were bright red cracks, or veins, in his skin. 

He looked like Kidman had, when she’d shoved those axes into his body, when he was a monster, when he learned what she really was. 

“The AI!” Joseph explained, “And I’m betting he’s not the only one coming!”

“That doesn’t matter! As long as we’re out of here before they reach us we’re safe.” 

“Kidman! Are you ready?” Joseph tried not to yell into the radio. The way that the AI was moving, the way that it had crossed a block as if it were a few steps, the redness of it, put panic in him, made his hands sweat in his gloves. 

“Just a few more seconds! The system can’t process more than one of you at a time.”

Joseph wasn’t sure if they had a few more seconds. The AI was almost there. He took a step back, getting in front of Stefano and Sebastian, bending down to retrieve his ax. 

\---

Stefano extricated himself from Sebastian’s hold and they stood together, the three of them. Sebastian’s heart felt full, happy that they ere all together, that there was a chance that this would work out after all, but at the same time it felt heavy, because he’d grown to like Emily’s imagined Stefano as well. There were still a few spirals of gray dancing in the air where he’d been, slowly fading away. Sebastian knew that of all the deaths he’d seen in here, the only one that was real was Amber. 

Stefano reached into his jacket, pulling out a pistol. It was Sebastian’s, the one that he’d found in here, anyway, and he didn’t even look at it as he handed it over. “When I stabbed you, you left these all behind. I’m sorry.”

They didn’t have time. Sebastian didn’t have time to care about the death of the false Stefano, he didn’t have time to feel love for these two men. He barely had time to aim after taking the gun. “You have nothing to apologize for. I trust you.”

He fired, the bullet going over Joseph’s shoulder and into the head of the AI. The bullet cracked it’s face like it was thick glass and both shards and fluid, tinted red by the lights within it, burst out the back. A good, clean shot, better than he ever would have done before Stefano had dragged him to the shooting ranges, better than he would have done if he’d never fallen for a sharp shooter in the first place.

“Hey!” Joseph cried out, covering his ear with one hand as he staggered to the side, glaring back at Sebastian. “You mind being careful with that?”

“You shouldn’t.” He heard Stefano murmur as he drew one of his knives. “And there’s everything.”

The AI wasn’t down. He stopped, he shook his head, and then he was rushing them again. “Internal servers crashing, Junction Instance in critical failure, loss of Core structure immediate.” He said and there was none of the personality that Sebastian had noticed before. He sounded like Luci, even the voice was the same. 

“Kidman?” Joseph asked the radio. 

“Ready!” she replied. 

Joseph started to glow, that beautiful golden light that always came from the mirrors, came from him going somewhere safe. Going to the real world, Sebastian hoped. 

“Core structure failure. Reestablish the core. Junction Instance failure imminent.” The AI said, emotionless, completely electronic. It was on Joseph, grabbing at him. “Reestablish link. Reconnect Core to Junction Instance central hub.”

Sebastian was re-aiming, ready to shoot the AI once more, though it hadn’t done much the first time. He couldn’t take the shot though. He could hardly even see. Joseph was struggling with it, a foot raised to kick him away. His foot connected and the AI staggered but it was hard to see what was happening, hard to see anything. Joseph was fading away. 

There was a flash and it was more the sound of it than the appearance that let Sebastian know that Stefano had moved. He grabbed the AI but the wrist as it staggered, pulled it closer to himself, half past him, before driving one of his knives into it, over and over again, until the red light faded and it slumped, one hand still reaching for Joseph. 

Joseph was barely there, he was just a mass of light, not even an inch of him recognizable from the rest. 

“Core destabilized. Junction solidarity corrupted. Structure lost,” came Luci’s voice. It wasn’t from the one in Stefano’s hand though. Sebastian spun, finding another one of them rushing him, flickering and twisting. He was the one from the hotel. There were more of them, more lights, coming from the distance. They all knew where they were. They would be overwhelmed too soon. 

Sebastian fired, again and again. The first shot missed wildly but the second and third hit the approaching host, first in the shoulder and then in the head, right   
between the eyes. It was half to the ground by the time Stefano was on it, finishing it off. 

Sebastian pulled the radio from his belt. “Juli! We need extraction! Now!”

“Just give the system a second!” He could hear how her teeth were grit. 

“We don’t have that much time! We’re kind of in a situation!” 

“If I try to extract you now, it could throw Joseph into the void! Or you! I have no idea where you’d end up!”

Sykes. Sebastian bit his lip shooting at the next of the AI, one the he didn’t recognize. Sykes had had an idea, and he ended up lost somewhere. He only had a 25% of extraction that way. Sebastian couldn’t risk it. 

Stefano teleported, taking down the next of the AI before Sebastian could react. The one after that though slammed into Stefano’s back, knocking him off balance. The balance knocked into his leg and he fell, trying to roll with it and out of the way of the AI’s grip. He wasn’t quite successful though, it grabbing his wrist and twisting it behind his back, making him cry out. 

“Loss of Core structure. Attempting to recreate Core structure. Material needed. Core applicant found. Attempting to establish connection between Core and Junction Instance.” 

Sebastian kicked it in the head, knocking it back, but it’s grip was still on Stefano’s arm. The rest of them were getting close too. It was on the ground though, easier for him to deal with. He stomped on its head, his foot coming down over and over, until its skin shattered and Stefano was free. 

“Alright, I’m ready!” Juli called out. “Who’s first?”

Stefano grabbed him by the arm, staying his hand, as he pulled himself upright. “You first,” he pleaded. “There are too many of them. I can handle them if I keep moving.”

“No!” Sebastian pulled his hand away, bringing the radio up to his mouth, “You’ll try to do something stupid, like try to stay behind. I need you out there. Juli! Get Stefano out of here!”

“You don’t have to be a hero! Per favore! Non posso lasciarti morire qui! Non capisci quanto ti amo?” 

Sebastian shook his head and fired at another of the approaching AI. There were already spots glowing on Stefano’s skin. “Ti amo anch'io. Non posso lasciarti ora.”


	19. Chapter 19

Bright. Too bright. The feeling of his head snapping, cracking, as the lens burst into a thousand pieces, but all far away. The pain seemed to be underwater, there but warped and heavy, floating away, not truly affecting him. He looked to Sebastian, but he could hardly see him, a silhouette among a million silhouettes. 

And then he was plunged down into whiteness. Stefano struggled, trying to regain understanding of his surroundings, but there was no way that he could make sense of it. He didn’t know if he was blind, if he was in the heart of a star, or if the world had simply gone white. It wasn’t until he was birthed from the ground, grabbed by the whiteness and pushed up and out, onto curling digits, porcelain or dead hands, that there was anything to see, a darkness. He was back to where he had started, where he had fallen, but now the hands were launching him upward, where he floated, rising to the surface, making his way to freedom. He could feel warmth, he could feel his body, heavier than before, his leg aching from a cramp brought on by spending too long in one position. He could see the surface, a ripple as if someone was reaching down for him, and he didn’t need to kick to make his way towards it. 

He breached the surface with a gasp, eye wide. He looked around, knowing how wild he must have looked, but Juli was there, reaching down and grabbing a hold of his arm, helping him up and out of the tub, so he could shiver and drip onto the glazed cement floor. He was dressed in lounge wear, and when she left him, heading back to her computer, he had to lean on the tub, support himself however he could. 

His cane was propped up against a barrier between the tubs and the strange capsules that housed the Cores. Next to it, on the floor, was his pedaling machine. 

“Did you use that on me while I was sleeping?” he asked, taking up his cane and bracing himself. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to see what had happened of all the Cores. 

She gave him a polite smile, “I didn’t want all of your hard work to be wasted. Are you ready?”

Stefano swallowed, “Should I not wait for Sebastian?”

“They’re awake-ish. They’re in a state between being awake and asleep,” Juli explained. “They might wake up fully soon and, well, I know I wouldn’t want to wake up in one of those things.”

He made his way over to the capsules, finding his legs a little bit weaker on the few steps than before, definitely weaker than they had been in STEM, but still strong enough to carry him without fear of falling. He looked between them and decided against opening the one that held Amber’s name. He had no way of knowing what condition Emily or Joseph would be in, but he was sure that Amber’s condition would be far worse. 

“I’m unlocking them now,” Juli informed him. “And I’m listening for Sebastian’s signal.”

The door to one of them, the one with the wrong name on it, clicked open, followed by Joseph’s. Stefano bit his lip and, without much thought to it, set his cane aside and opened the door for Emily. 

She was pale and slender, too slender, and she didn’t look a thing like the Emily that he knew. He reached in, brushing past her could arms, noticing the goosebumps starting to spread on her as she was exposed to the air. Inside, it was easy to forget that the form wasn’t right, that she was just a child. Her hair must have been short, a boys haircut, when she’d been put in, and she was dressed like a boy, a monster truck on her shirt. Whoever was her handler must not have known her very well. 

He was quick to unplug things, wrap his arms around her gently, and tug her out of capsule. He could feel her breathe against him and, while his skin was just as cold as hers, a warmth was spreading within him. She was alright. She was alive. She was going to be safe. 

She rolled her eyes from behind her eyelashes as he held her close, tried to give her some of the body heat he was starting to produce. She was breathing, slow but steady. He wondered if she would be like him, comatose, for far too long, and he felt himself squeeze her harder, too hard, possibly. He heard her exhale as he squeezed the air out of her lungs. He didn’t want to wait that long. He didn’t know how Sebastian had been able to do it. He wanted her safe now. He couldn’t sit around in anxiety and wait for her to come back. 

“Too tight,” she wheezed. 

He chuckled, releasing his grip on her, and pulling back slightly. She was groggy and confused, looking around the room with her eyes only, and she looked very tired. “Are we out?” 

“Yes,” he promised pressing a kiss to her forehead, “We’re awake now.”

“I’m so tired,” she admitted, rubbing one of her eyes with her hand, “and my voice sounds funny.”

“Just wait until you’re standing, you’re a whole different height.”

She pulled out of his grip, looking over herself. “I’m a little boy again.” She sounded dismayed, a warble growing in her voice. “I was so happy, being a girl.”

He pulled back as well, looking down her frame, a hand on either of her elbows. She hadn’t hit puberty yet, even though she should have been starting it soon. It was all prolonged by STEM, her growth and her maturing. Lily had had such growing pains in the months after she had gotten out of STEM. He was sure Emily would have the same thing. 

“No, you’re a little girl, Emily. You’re body might not be what you want it to be, not yet, but you’ll get there, I promise.” 

“You’re still calling me Emily?” 

He smiled, “Of course I am, why wouldn’t I?”

Her eyes were wet and she lunged forward, wrapping her arms around him. 

\---

There was a crack of light in the darkness and then that crack spread and Joseph was blinking, blinded for a moment against the unnatural light. He wasn’t in STEM, he could tell that much, his joints felt stiff and his body felt heavy. He felt cold and his throat was dry. Hands were passing him, unplugging cords and wires. He couldn’t see them, just a fuzzy silhouette. 

He was helped out of the capsule and he found that his body was uncertain. He couldn’t support himself in the least. He leaned heavily on the silhouette, who was becoming more of a person now that his eyes were adjusting. 

“I’m awake?” he asked and his voice sounded so quiet, even in his own ears. 

“Yes,” Stefano’s voice; so he made it out too. Joseph blinked, trying to will his eyes to focus, but, without his glasses, there was no chance of that. He wanted to see what Stefano looked like, what he really looked like. “We’re in the real world now.”

“Sebastian?” 

There was a pause and someone, Kidman, from a short distance away answered him. “We’re still waiting for Sebastian. He should have signaled me that he’s ready by now. I don’t know what the hold up is though.”

He felt Stefano stiffen around him as he himself felt his nervousness start to rise. 

“Of course he wanted the rest of us out first,” Joseph complained. “Could he be in any danger?”

Stefano nodded. “The AI that were coming for us, when they began to overwhelm us, Sebastian elected that I return first. I disapproved of the decision but he is a very stubborn man.”

Joseph nodded, but it didn’t settle his nerves in any way. “Is there anything that we can do?” 

“Wait,” Kidman instructed. “That’s all that any of us can do. I’m not putting you back in there, without a Core the whole system is in disrepair, that’s why the AI is so violent. Sebastian will be fine. He’s been through STEM twice before this.”

Joseph swallowed, turning back to Stefano. The first time was with Ruvik, the three of them trying to stay together. The second was when he met Stefano. He couldn’t even imagine what must of happened in there. He had a lot of questions for Kidman, ones in which he wanted a gun in his hand. For the moment, he just asked Stefano. 

“Why did he enter STEM a second time?” 

Stefano’s hands were on his back and Joseph realized that he was being cradled against the man, practically a stranger’s, chest. He was rubbing circles into Joseph’s back. He didn’t feel itchy, or like he was going to break apart, or jump. He felt grounded. He felt safe. He didn’t expect that he’d ever feel that again. 

“He went back for Lily,” Stefano explained. 

He was turning his head, looking out at someone else. Joseph tried to follow his gaze but all he saw was a pink and green blur against the side of a gray blur. His eyebrows knotted, confusion blossoming in his brain. 

“But Lily’s dead.”

Stefano shook his head. Heat was in Joseph’s cheeks, an excited twitch in his fingers. Lily was alive? It was something that he’d never imagined. He’d held Sebastian up through the worst of it, held his hand through the best of it, but never did he suspect that Myra might have been right. She had spiraled into such a state and his hands, his heart, and his mind were so distracted by Sebastian that he hadn’t been able to even try to understand her theories. 

“She was the perfect Core candidate and,” Stefano went very quiet for a moment, his voice distant and somewhat deranged, like he was that monster, that artist again, “the perfect muse. They brought her in and I was just a citizen of STEM, one of the people who resided inside of it, and I was tasked to take her power for someone else. It was as an enemy that Sebastian found me.”

Joseph felt cold anger grow through him. He was staring at Stefano, even though he couldn’t see him very well, but he could make out some features from this distance. Stefano was hiding behind his hair, was speaking in that quiet way of the subservient or apologetic, but Joseph couldn’t feel sorry for him. He could only feel a rage growing inside of him. Stefano had completely stopped moving against him. 

“You hurt her?” he growled. “She was just a kid! How could he ever forgive you for that?” 

Stefano raised his hands, not a threat, not anything, just a man. “I know that what I did was wrong, that I traumatized her, I have known since I started to live with Sebastian, have had to live with her nightmares and damage. I know that it was not all on me, that I did what I could in the moments that I was myself, that I protected her when I was not using her. I can never fix what I have done, although Sebastian has been kind enough to forgive me for it.” 

Joseph was simmering, but Stefano was slumping. “I love her, Joseph, so much, as if she were my own daughter. It has not even been that long, I am certain that you care for her far more than I do, but I have such a connection with her. I do not want to lose that.”

Joseph didn’t know what to think. There was so much good news and so much bad news as well. He could feel nothing but conflicted. 

“And Myra?”

“She destroyed Mobius, helping us escape.”

Joseph went quiet. He knew how to feel about that at least. “She didn’t make it, did she?” 

“No. But neither did any of her enemies.”

\---

They weren’t faster than him at least. They were smarter though, and angrier, and they didn’t get tired. He was losing to them, fast. Juli was calling out to him, every so often, but he couldn’t answer. He couldn’t do anything, aside from keep running. There was no Core and the AI wouldn’t stop telling him how that was damaging the instance of STEM. He didn’t need the reminders. He already knew. 

The world falling apart around him was working to his advantage though. He let himself fall as the road cracked and shifted, going from one platform to the lower part of the road before it drifted away. The AI had to think first, had to calculate, even though they were aggressive and broken. He’d thrown his gun at one of them a while ago, before the earthquakes had split Junction. He still had Joseph’s ax and he clutched it tightly, trying not to think about how much of the blood on the handle was his partner’s. 

He slid into an alley, hid in the shadows, breathed, panted, tried to catch up. He was out of shape. He’d been working on getting in shape but he wasn’t there, not quite. No one was in enough shape to outrun mental robots. He didn’t even know how they worked. If there were physical robots out there or if they were just strings of code, somehow duplicated into humanoid bodies. It wasn’t his job to understand, he just had to avoid them. 

“Sebastian?” 

He grit his teeth, biting back a curse. Of course, Juli would give him away. 

“I’m a little busy!” he hissed back into his radio. 

“Finally! Everyone else is awake, we’re just waiting for you.”

Sebastian poked his head out of the alley for a moment, did curse under his breath, and started to make his way to the other side. The AI had caught up to him, but they didn’t know where he was, not yet. They were still looking around for him, bodies shaking, spasming, and glowing. At least they couldn’t sneak up on him. 

He looked out onto the road. One of the signs was cracked but he could still see it. “I’m on Mabel and Firth,” he whispered. 

“Okay, stay where you are, I’m pinpointing you now,” Juli instructed. 

“Look, I know I have to stay in one place while you do this, but I can fight too, right? That’s allowed?” 

“I don’t know, no one’s ever needed to before.” 

One of the AI walked by his hiding place and he ducked down, further into the shadows. He didn’t breathe for a moment, kept silent until it had passed. 

“I think I might need to.” 

He didn’t need to. He could have stayed right where he was. He snuck out from the alley, sliding up behind the AI that had just walked past, and brought the ax down on it, smashing through it’s head, making it splatter that clear fluid in a wide arc. It wasn’t going to walk past again, it wasn’t going to find him, not when it was dead.   
It fell, dead, easy, to his feet. He smirked to himself. He was expecting a lot more of an issue. 

Then he heard it, turning, to see the rest of them coming towards him. They may not have seen him but they didn’t need to. They all knew where he was. They were all connected. 

“Fuck!” he growled, making his way back into the alley. He was starting to glow, but it was in rough patches. It was going to take too long. He’d made the mistake of drawing all of their attentions. They wouldn’t be letting him get out of there easily. 

He braced himself, bringing up the ax like a very small, very meager shield. He didn’t have to kill them all. He just had to survive long enough to wake up. The patches were growing, steadily. It wasn’t as fast as it had been in Union. 

He swung, ignoring the way that the world was rumbling, breaking apart around him. He could tell that his footing was rough, that the alley he was in wasn’t going to exist for much longer, but he had no where else to go. He didn’t have much space to move but he jammed the ax into the closest AI’s shoulder and then kicked it off, knocking it back and into the others. The next one he spun on, quickly cutting off its head. It he could kill enough of them fast enough, he could make a little bit of a wall, make it harder on the rest. 

The wall shook, breaking apart, falling into the void that was becoming more apparent under his feet. He had to stay close to where he was, or he would be stuck there. He couldn’t leave. 

Cold hands, grabbed him and he bellowed, kicked out with his feet, pushing away the one in front of him as he was hoisted up from behind. One of the AI was holding him by the arms and he couldn’t swing. A tight squeeze until he was crying out, feeling the muscle bruise and break under the treatment. He dropped the ax. He heard it clatter onto the pavement and then scrape and then it was falling. He could see it, the ground beneath his feet falling away completely. It was only the AI keeping him from falling along with it. 

Still he fought, kicking out, screaming. There was no one else there, no one left that he had to hide from. The monsters had all left with those that had created them. He only had himself to rely on. Only had himself to blame. 

They needed a new Core. They were going to make him into it. 

He closed his eyes against the blinding light of his own body and allowed himself to drift into the cold void, suddenly free of the AI’s clutches.


	20. Prendere tempo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is fully in Stefano's perspective, unlike previous chapters. Can you imagine I intended there to be an actual sex scene in here?

Stefano bolted to his feet, turning and stumbling, throwing out his cane to catch himself. He made his way to the tub, where Sebastian was heaving himself up, coughing, gripping the sides. He was trying to pull himself out of the tub. 

Stefano dropped his cane at the side of the tub and reached out, grabbing Sebastian by the arms, and helping himself up. Sebastian’s face only flickered with his relief in seeing Stefano, buried under so much concern. 

“Joseph?” he hissed. His legs weren’t as weak as Stefano’s but still he clutched at the edge of the tub. 

Stefano only nodded his head in Joseph’s direction. As much as Joseph had proposed that they try, that they talk about this, he still couldn’t stop his heart from twisting with envy as Sebastian left him behind to hurry, as best he could, to Joseph. Joseph was still sitting on the floor, where Stefano had left him. 

Sebastian allowed himself to fall beside him, to grab him, to pull him in for a strong embrace. Stefano could do nothing but watch. He was relieved as well, of course he was, but there was a knot in his throat. He wondered, if when he’d been found in the tub, if Sebastian had held him like that? He remembered the hospital after, when he’d finally woken up, and how Sebastian had cried for him. He could see such tears on his face for Joseph now too. Perhaps it wasn’t so different. Perhaps he really did care for them both in similar ways. 

A hand found his shoulder and he jumped, but it was just Juli, grinning in a way that he’d never seen before. He didn’t know her well, but she had a strong guard of her emotions so much of the time that he didn’t know if it was a mask or not. He thought that she may have been like him, in a way. 

“Give them some time,” she instructed. “It’s been years. Joseph’s going to need a lot of support, not just from Sebastian. I think you’ll be good for them.” 

Stefano chuckled at that. He’d only ever been good for himself before. 

\---

Emily was a solid weight in his lap, in the car, on the way to the airport. Sebastian had fought for the hospital but Joseph had been very much against it and Juli spoke up about what had happened last time. They knew what to do. Both of them would need physical therapy and were terribly malnurished, but they could fix that. They could join Stefano in his physical therapy too, since he still remembered all of the steps. 

Emily was asleep for most of it. Carrying a child through an airport wasn’t unusual. Joseph was harder to get through. He could walk, but only for a few minutes at a time and he had no balance. His weight was too much for him to carry as well, regardless of how thin he was. He had to lean heavily on Sebastian or Juli all the while and he was much less comfortable with Juli. Something had happened between them and Stefano didn’t know what it was. People glared at them, a few taking steps out of their way, and Stefano could hear a few of them whispering. Luckily most of them just thought that Joseph was drunk instead of too weak to take care of himself. 

Juli got them their tickets and led them to their gate, only leaving them once they’d found some seats. Joseph was in between them, leaning on Sebastian’s shoulder, panting. He was covered in sweat. 

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Sebastian asked and it was that same quiet voice that Sebastian had used in the hospital or late at night, when Stefano’s dreams stirred him. 

“I’m fine,” Joseph bit the words. Sebastian ran a hand through an inch of his hair before his fingers got caught in a snag. It was long and ragged. It would need to be cut. He had a beard too and dark circles under his eyes. “I just need some rest.”

He’d slept in the car. He was going to sleep on the plane too. But Stefano knew how tired he must be, both from the difficulty of having to move in a body for the first time in years but from the amount of time he had slept without actually sleeping at all. Joseph lay his head down on Sebastian’s shoulder, taking off his glasses and gently folding them in his lap, before closing his eyes. Sebastian had an arm wrapped around his shoulders. Stefano was far away, even though he was sitting right next to them. 

He reached out, feeling like he was trespassing and hating himself for being so strange and distant. He put his hand on Joseph’s thigh. It was just a gentle rub and he felt like he should pull away, leave them to it, but Joseph hummed in appreciation. Stefano drew closer, mentally, realizing that he was allowed to touch, that it wasn’t just Joseph and Sebastian, but he could also be a part of it. He knew that he could, he’d been invited to, but having Joseph actually appreciate his gesture made it all the more real. 

Sebastian pressed a kiss to Joseph’s forehead but his gaze was on Stefano. Stefano almost pulled his hand away from Joseph under that gaze. It was warm though, concerned and relieved, and Stefano didn’t know what he did to deserve it but he felt terribly loved. 

\---

Another ride in the car, this time Sebastian’s. Juli was driving still and she kept her eyes on the road, letting them stay together. Joseph was resting gently, his held against Sebastian’s shoulder, and Sebastian was running his hands down Joseph’s boney back.

Stefano sat beside them, titled so that his back was against the window, ignoring how it stretched the band of the seat belt. Emily had woken up a few times, asked a question or two, and then fallen back to sleep. 

“What are we going to do with her?” Sebastian asked, his voice almost a purr. 

Stefano looked up at him without moving his head. He wasn’t sure what Sebastian was thinking, but if it was anything other than what Stefano was planning, he wasn’t going to get his way. Stefano knew exactly what he wanted to do with her. 

“She can have the spare room,” he nodded, his cheek rubbing against her forehead. 

“You’re going to have to find a new home for some of your equipment then,” Sebastian chuckled. “I’m not going to help you build a shed.” 

Stefano smiled at him, wryly. “Yes you will.”

“No,” Sebastian put on his most stubborn face. The kind he made when Lily asked for something and he had to pretend that he hadn’t already caved. “No I won’t.”

Stefano closed his eye and relaxed against the window, their thighs bumping against one another. “You will look out the window and see me make a mess of things and then you will come out to fix it for me.”

Sebastian grinned. Stefano felt warmth grow in his cheeks and in his heart. He liked having Sebastian’s attention, more than anyone else’s. “How long will she be staying with us?”

“Until she’s ready to go, or forever, whichever one is longer,” he cooed into her hair. 

“I never thought of you as the paternal type.”

He froze, Sebastian’s words rattling around in his head. He was paternal. He’d been as good of a parental unit as he could be to Lily. Even before he’d properly met Sebastian, he had done what he could to take care of her. He was still new to a lot of things and there were still times in which he was the cause of one of Lily’s nightmares, but they were fewer now. They were better. And when she saw his face, his real face, there was no fear in her. He loved her, desperately, though he couldn’t compare that love to that of a flesh and blood daughter. This was the closest he’d ever get. 

“Am I a bad father?” he asked, flicking his hair away from his face, keeping his emotions buried. He didn’t want Sebastian to see how much that hurt. 

Sebastian read him easily. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I have done what I could with Lily. I would think that I have proven myself to be a decent enough caretaker and source of love. Is that not true?”

Sebastian reached out and Joseph stirred slightly in his hold. He ran a finger down Stefano’s arm. He was trying to apologize without saying it. “You’re both of those and a good role model on top of it. You and Lily have grown so much from each other. You could easily be a father.”

“And yet,” Stefano gestured. 

“I just didn’t think you’d want that for yourself.” 

Stefano pressed a kiss to Emily’s forehead. “I want her safe and I want her to stay with me. And I love Lily so dearly. I never want them to have anything bad to happen to them every again.”

Sebastian’s smile warmed and the love in his eyes was soft and drilling. “Of course. I think Emily would love to have you as her dad.”

\---

All of the planning in the world, all of his desire to take care of Emily and Lily, didn’t account for how nervous he was when Juli finally drove into the driveway. Joseph woke up, softly mumbling, and looked out the window at the house. He seemed to be surprised by it for some reason. Emily barely stirred, only doing so when Stefano put a finger under her chin and whispered in her ear. 

They all climbed out of the car, in various stages of uprightness, and Stefano could see Lily in the window, looking down at them. Stefano’s mouth was dry. He hadn’t intended to come back with another child. There had been no planning for this. He suddenly felt very very chilled and bewildered and like this was all too much. 

Sebastian helped Joseph make his way towards the house and that was when Lily’s eyes lit up and she vanished from view. It was hardly a few minutes later that the door flew open, before they had reached it, and Lily was rushing out, grabbing Joseph by the waist, wrapping her arms around him tightly. 

“You’re back!” She squealed. “You’re okay!”

Joseph removed himself from Sebastian’s hold to wrap his arms around Lily. “I’m okay. I’m alright now. I’m so glad you’re okay. I thought, we all thought that you were dead.”

“Yeah, but I’m not,” Lily glanced over at Stefano, at the lump that was slowly shifting in his arms. “I was the Core for a while, just like you. But Dad came and got me.”

“Looks like we’ve got a lot in common now.”

She nodded frantically but her eyes were still on Emily as she rubbed her eyes “Who’s that?”

Lily was going to hate her. Or she was going to call Emily the wrong thing. Or she wouldn’t want a sister. Stefano felt himself choke on the different scenarios that flooded his mind. He didn’t know why he’d thought that Lily would be ecstatic about this. It all seemed, very much, like a very bad idea now. 

Sebastian ran a hand through Lily’s hair, messing it up. Latoya, her babysitter, was standing in the doorway, watching them in a relieved but confused state. She must have had a lot of questions that none of them would ever answer. 

“That’s Emily. She was one of the Cores too,” Sebastian explained. “She doesn’t have anywhere else to go and well, we were hoping that she could stay here with us.”

Lily’s expression didn’t change. She was, for the moment, completely unreadable. “Will I have to share my room?”

Sebastian smiled at her. “No, baby. You don’t have to share your room. She’ll be taking the spare.”

Lily was looking at Emily hard, as if trying to read her, as if trying to understand everything that she was. Then she smiled and shrugged. “Okay!” She turned her attention back to Joseph. “You better come in then, things have changed a lot!” 

“I’m sure they have, Joseph smiled.”

Sebastian picked Joseph up bridal style and they all laughed and followed Lily into the house. 

\---

Having Emily there was tough, but it took a lot of Stefano’s attention; distracted him from the jealousy that was still so strong in him. Whenever he looked over to see Sebastian spoiling Joseph he felt distant and awkward, even though he knew that it wasn’t really spoiling. Sebastian was just doing his physical therapy with him, was checking his vitals, was helping him. Stefano didn’t help with any of that. He didn’t feel like it was his place. 

He was too busy with Emily. He helped her use his pedal machine, even though it was far too big for her, and he helped her walk as best he could, even on days in which his leg felt stiff and he could barely get out of bed. 

He slept with her some nights, when sharing a bed with Sebastian and Joseph felt like it was too much. She had nightmares and so did he and he knew that he would end up in her bed eventually, to hold her close and keep her company and promise her that all of this was real. 

She was awkward with Lily too, as if she was constantly aware that there was something off about herself, that Lily was going to catch onto it sooner or later, that Lily was going to call her out on it. Stefano knew that that wouldn’t happen though, Lily was clever and smart and she had better empathy than Stefano had ever hoped to. 

He’d eavesdropped, once, when Juli had taken Lily aside and explained it to her. Juli knew a lot more about Emily’s experience than made sense, at first. She explained the mental and physical differences, how Emily’s body wasn’t what matched what she wanted and how transitioning worked. Stefano wanted to hug her for that, to thank her, because he knew that he’d never be able to have such a conversation with that much information and understanding, or patience. It wasn’t until later that he realized why Juli had known all of that. 

He was lying in bed, Emily wrapped up against him, trying to sleep through her late growth spurt and aching legs. She had gained so much weight already, and they’d had to cut her hair short to get rid of some of the knots but she was doing better. She was doing so much better. 

There was a slight knock on the door and Stefano stirred, looking towards it. He didn’t have to say anything before the door opened. There was still some of Stefano’s things in the room, in boxes and on tripods, and they made scary shapes in the dark. Lily didn’t seem bothered by it though. She had a cheap pink phone in her hand turned onto flashlight mode. 

“Stefano?” she asked, her voice a barely audible hiss. 

“Yes, mia angela?” he asked back, just as quiet. 

She took a few steps into the room, tiptoeing as quietly as she could. She didn’t look like her time as the Core had hurt her at all. She acted like her time with him hadn’t traumatized her at all too, most of the time. 

“Can you not sleep?” he asked as she crawled onto the bed with them. 

She shook her head. “Can I sleep with you two tonight?” 

He was slightly taken aback. “Why don’t you sleep with your father?” 

“Dad and Joseph sprawl out a lot,” she complained and Stefano chuckled, knowing full well that they did. “And it feels weird for some reason. I feel like it’s because you’re not there with them.” 

“I’ll be there eventually,” he promised. “I know you explained it to me, how your father works, but I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet.”

She slipped up beside him, under the covers, and Emily was sandwiched between them. “She’s staying, isn’t she?” 

Stefano nodded. He worried about Lily’s response. 

Lily pondered it for a moment and then exhaled, nice and slow. “It’s going to take time to get used to having a sister.”

“It’s going to take time to get used to Joseph. I’ll try if you do.”

Lily flashed him a smile, a promise, before turning off her light. 

\---

Sebastian didn’t push. He didn’t prod. But he did give them opportunities to be alone together. At the moment he was at costco, taking Lily and Emily with him, so they could get some clothes and a big bottle of painkillers and some other necessities. It would be a good couple of hours until they returned. A good while for him and Joseph to bond. 

Stefano though, was more interested in his work, at the moment. He was in his studio, made out of part of the basement, working on some of the photographs that he’d taken. He would never have expected them, the subject matter or the mood of them, before meeting Sebastian. These were a series of close ups, blurs of movement with a single piece in focus. Usually the movement of Lily’s dark hair on a bright day or the spin of Emily’s skirt in the rain. They were both such good models, such inspirations for his work. He was hanging the photos to dry when he heard a knock on the door. 

“Do not worry,” he said to the room, “the negatives are all safe.” 

Sebastian wasn’t home yet. It was Joseph who entered the room. He was dressed well, when he was allowed to dress himself and he had the energy for it he was always dressed well. He slinked into the room, up behind Stefano, and leaned over him. They were just about the same height so he had to rest his head on Stefano’s shoulder to do such a thing. He was quiet for a moment, just watching Stefano hang them. He was on Stefano’s good side, making sure he was safe. 

“Those are beautiful,” Joseph commented. 

“They’re not exactly gallery worthy,” Stefano mused, “But with, perhaps some work I could make something out of them.”

“I like them. I like the way the colors direct the eye,” Joseph was trying, he was seriously trying, to get the terminology down. Stefano shuddered at the realization that Joseph actually knew a thing or two about art, at least the basics of it, and he might actually appreciate it more that Sebastian ever could. “The little bit of darkness hidden in each one, no matter how bright. It makes me feel… connected.”

“Oh?” Stefano smiled. “Don’t tell me you also have a little bit of darkness.”

Joseph snorted lightly. It felt good against Stefano’s cheek. “I wouldn’t say it’s so little.” 

They stood in silence, until Stefano was done hanging the photographs, and he could feel pride make him blush as Joseph inspected each of them silently. He couldn’t quite see Joseph’s expression. He wanted to see it, he found, in the middle of a gallery. It would take time though, especially since he’d been gone so long and the direction of his work had changed so much, for him to rebuild a portfolio worthy of a show. 

“Stefano?” he asked as he finally let Stefano go on his own, to wash his hands of the chemicals. After they were dry they hesitated over the red leather gloves. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to wear them. He didn’t like being too bare around Joseph, not yet. He didn’t know how how he’d react. 

“Yes, mio amico?” Stefano decided against it. He felt like he needed to, to let Joseph in, to try. 

Joseph hadn’t moved. He was still staring at the photos but one hand was to his lips. “Sebastian wants us to bond. He wants us to get along with each other.”

“I think we do get along,” Stefano cut in, honestly.

“Yes but, maybe more than just as friends. I do find you very attractive. I found you pleasant to be around. I find your passion extremely endearing. I’d like us to try to be more than just friends.”

Of course. Of course that was what Joseph was here for. It was the whole reason Sebastian had left them alone after all. 

“I see,” he mumbled. 

Joseph was uncertain. He was nervous. Stefano took the initiative. He didn’t want to but he knew that Joseph wouldn’t push him. His initiative took him so far as to stand in front of Joseph, block his view. 

“And what, exactly, would you like to do with me?”

Joseph ran a hand through his hair. He was doing well, all things considered, but he looked tired, shaky, and like he needed to sit down. Stefano had been there. “I’d like to kiss you,” he stated as if it were nothing, his voice emotionless, even though his eyes wouldn’t look at Stefano’s and there was a tint of pink to his cheeks. “I’d like to kiss you a lot of times.”

Stefano took a step closer to him. He’d promised Lily that he would try, that he just needed time. Perhaps he also needed a bit of fire against the fuse. 

“Then perhaps you should kiss me.”

Joseph bit his lip and then he was finally stepping forward, clearing that little remaining space between them. Stefano jumped when Joseph put his hands on him, warm and comforting, but in the wrong place, on his cheeks, but Joseph was quick to catch it, to move the hand that had nestled under his hair. Sebastian could touch him there but that had taken a lot of work and he just wasn’t there yet with Joseph. 

Joseph didn’t say anything about it. He just repositioned his hand, so that it was on his jaw instead, and then he was leaning in. His kiss was so different from Sebastian’s. It was more in the lips, less in the teeth, more reserved, and soft, as nervous as the rest of him. He hummed though and Stefano could feel the vibrations of it in his mouth. He was suddenly so hungry for it, reaching out and grabbing a hold of Joseph, pulling him in deeper. 

Joseph moaned against him, hands stroking, and he deepened the kiss, dragging his tongue into it, across Stefano’s teeth. His hands left his face to work down his sides and Stefano knew that if Joseph pulled up his shirt he’d see all of those scars, because he was completely covered in the things, but, at the moment he didn’t mind. He didn’t trust Joseph the same way that he did Sebastian, but they were working on it, they were getting there. 

Joseph’s hands weren’t stopping, they were rolling down further, down over his ass and then he was pushing, or falling, Stefano wasn’t certain, but he let Joseph lead him over to the single chair in the room. It was red and plush and Stefano had got it at a garage sale but it was perfect for his little dark room, when he was too tired to keep standing. 

Joseph pushed him into that chair and he didn’t have to but he allowed himself to be pushed. It was a recliner, something that he forgot about often as he never used such a function. Joseph was still kissing him when he joined him in the chair, straddling his hips. It was so different but it didn’t feel wrong, not yet. He was sure that it would that soon there would be so much guilt in his system that he couldn’t think straight. But for now, he was being kissed by his boyfriend’s boyfriend, and he didn’t feel like he was a third wheel. He felt so close, like this wasn’t just alright but preferred. 

Joseph pulled the lever and Stefano gasped, falling back in the chair, cushioned from the flow. He was still, against the back of the chair and he could feel how hard Joseph was. 

His hair fell away from his eye and Joseph pulled away, looking at him. His hand was quick, touching his cheek, framing it as he examined it. Stefano was breathing, deep, horrible breaths. They must have seemed like he was breathless from the passion. 

His wrists were bound. Wire ties cutting into his wrists. He was lying on his back. The army hospital cot was narrow and he felt like he would fall through it. Joseph was saying something, the tone kind. He could hear Italian, horrible dirty things, claiming things, things that were echoed in his nightmares, that dragged him out of his own mind and buried him in the past. 

There was a weight against him and then grinding down and he knew what was going to happen. He would be laid bare and penetrated, used, because that was what he was good for, and Paolo would carve and cut and remove from him what he could, loving the response. Stefano would clench as the scalpel, the fingers went deep. 

Joseph pulled off of him and he was saying something but Stefano couldn’t hear him. He was rolling off of the chair and onto the ground and then picking himself up and running, as best as he could, crashing into the door as he forced it open and himself through it. He hardly made it to the bathroom before he was vomiting, barely getting the toilet seat up in time. 

Paolo was dead. Paolo was dead. Joseph wouldn’t hurt him. Sebastian wouldn’t allow it.


	21. Chapter 21

It was hard, getting used to civilian life, getting used to real life. Walking was hard, eating was hard. He could hardly keep anything down. Sebastian and Juli and Stefano were doing their best to help him but he felt like he was losing weight instead of gaining it. He remembered reading about POWs who had been starved and then, when rescued, sent home, only to die because their stomachs had shrank so much that they couldn’t fill them with enough food to live. He didn’t want to be like one of them. He didn’t want Emily to be like one of them either. 

She was doing better than he was, was at least able to finish her plate, albeit with very small portions. She was getting better. 

And there was Lily. She was fine. She was healthy and helpful and there. She had a big grin on her face and she seemed to be so perfectly fine with everything that had happened. He was sure that she was traumatized, but she didn’t show it. She held Joseph’s hand and helped him around the house and that was such a responsibility but she didn’t seem to care. She liked helping. She was the best of all of them. 

She spent a lot of nights in their bed. A lot of the time, when he woke up to find Stefano missing, Lily would be in his place , wrapped around her father. She was too old to be sleeping in her parent’s bed but, after everything that had happened, he didn’t blame her. And when he dreamed of scratching his skin raw, she was always there to run her small hands over the remembered wounds and kiss his scalp and he could wrap his arms around her and cry as much as he needed to. 

\---

He had his crutches and he was waiting by the car. The drawstring of Sebastian’s pants were pulled as tight as they could be but they still felt like they were falling down. He was finally gaining some weight, thanks to Stefano’s idea that he didn’t eat meals but just snacked throughout the day, almost constantly, and he always had some toast or rice or cereal with him.

The sun was out, fitting for his first time out of the house since entering it. Sebastian was taking his time though, checking in with Stefano and the girls. They were just going to get some groceries and some clothes. Joseph and Emily didn’t have any of their own and they could only go so long with hand me downs. Sebastian was overprotective of his family, even though it was a bit bigger than before and all signs of a threat had been dealt with. Joseph didn’t mind. He did mind standing for so long though. 

Sebastian sighed when he finally got to the car and into the driver’s seat. Joseph took his spot next to him and gave him a smile which he hoped was brilliant. It must have been something, at least, because Sebastian smiled back at him before running a hand through his hair and pulling him close for a kiss. 

They drove in silence for a while, just the radio playing, and Joseph only recognized about a third of the songs that were playing. It was disconcerting. 

“What happened between you and Stefano?” Sebastian asked, casually, once they had to slow for traffic. “I thought you two were getting along but then, you both got really formal. Something had to of happened.”

Joseph bowed his head. He didn’t want to talk about it. He knew that what he had done was wrong but he didn’t know why it was. Stefano didn’t seem amicable to questioning either. 

“I thought it would be good for us to try being together,” Joseph admitted eventually, looking out the window. “I know you want the three of us to have the same sort of relationship we had with Myra so I tried to to instigate that with Stefano.” 

Sebastian paled and he swallowed, hard. “You didn’t, uh, try to make him bottom, did you?”

Joseph stared at traffic. It seemed to be heavier than it used to be. “I wouldn’t say ‘make’ but I guess I did imply that. We didn’t get very far, mind you. A few kisses and then he was lying down on the recliner and freaked out. He ran off and he hasn’t really spoken to me other than clinical suggestion since.”

Sebastian swallowed. He looked sweaty and uncomfortable. He told him everything, about Paolo, about how Stefano couldn’t work past what had happened with him, how, no matter what, Stefano couldn’t be put into such a position again. 

Joseph understood and he worried, remembering how he’d bound Stefano’s wrists in barbed wire. 

There was someone in the crowd and Joseph shivered, pulling closer to Sebastian. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to know anything about the man.

Joseph was getting stronger, using his crutches was almost natural to him now, and he was out and about with Sebastian or Stefano more often. Stefano was still a bit distant with him but it was getting better. He was with Sebastian though, just walking through town, no goal in mind, when he saw him. 

Not really him because there was no way that it could be him. He was dead. Sebastian had killed him. That didn’t stop Joseph from stopping in his tracks and staring. 

Across the street was a man, his skin so pale that he looked like he could be dead, was standing, staring, watching everyone who passed him as he leaned against the wall. His eyes were bright and pale. He wore a white hoodie, the hood of which covered his pale blonde hair. His hands were tightly fisted into the pockets. His skin was clear but that didn’t matter. 

Joseph’s crutch was out, almost tripping Sebastian but Sebastian could see the terror in his face before he could scold him for it. He followed Joseph’s gaze and caught the man and even Sebastian was shuddering in concern. 

“That’s not him,” Sebastian swore but he still turned them around so that they could walk back the way they had come. 

\---

They were watching a movie that Joseph knew. It was one that he had Sebastian had watched after a long couple of days at work with no end in sight, just to get away for a while. He could ignore it, focus on his thoughts, on what he wanted to do. Stefano hadn’t seen the film before but he didn’t show much interest in high octane car chases. The girls were asleep. He could speak openly. 

He was resting between them, his back against Sebastian’s half asleep frame, feeling how strong he was, even after all these years. One of his legs were outstretched, pulled into Stefano’s lap. They were both so warm. He always ran cold himself and their combined heat was amazing. Right now the heat of Stefano’s hands were being worked into his tired muscles, a deep massage from which fingers still worked easing the stress of the past week. 

“Stefano, I know I fucked it up last time, but I’d like to try again sometime.” His voice was quiet and there was a car crash on the screen, making him hard to hear. 

Stefano’s hands went still as he stared at him, one eyebrow raised. “Try again? Try what again?” 

Joseph could feel himself blushing, could tell that he was getting nervous and uncomfortable. He had Sebastian there to back him up, he could feel his large warm hands rub down his arms. “Well, you know, sex.”

The eyebrow rose higher. “Sex? Just sex?”

Joseph took off his glasses and rubbed at his brow. He was really going to make him spell it out. “Look, I know that last time I was a little bit forbearing and I rushed things and I put you into a position that you weren’t comfortable with. I really messed it up. I should have been slower and more receptive. I should have put your interests first.”

Sebastian did have his back. He could feel it in the way that Sebastian was touching him, in how he was supporting him. It helped him keep talking. 

“I understand things a bit better now and I was hoping you’d give me another chance.”

Stefano blinked, long drawn out blink, and then he breathed. “I do not wish to only have intercourse,” he said, his voice practically a purr. It rattles Joseph’s nerves. “Sebastian wants us to have a real relationship, the three of us. I do not see how that is plausible, it is not in my repertoire, but I am willing to try. Our last attempt was unfortunate, but I do think what you wish is plausible. For Sebastian’s sake.”

“You don’t need to do anything for my sake,” Sebastian promised, his lips warm on Joseph’s scalp and his nails gently trailing down Joseph’s sides. 

Stefano just looked at Sebastian with a half lidded eye. “There are many things I would do for your sake,” he explained. “This would benefit me as well.”

Joseph could feel Sebastian smile against him. 

\---

It was three more days before they had the chance, Lily taking Emily to a birthday party for one of her school friends. There would be lots of girls their age there. It would be good for them. It was strange, seeing how comfortable Sebastian was with it, with Lily not in his eye sight. Things were getting better. 

Stefano looked nervous. His eye kept catching on Sebastian and sticking there, as if waiting for Sebastian to make a move. He did so, catching Stefano by the wrist and leading him to the bed. Stefano knelt in the center of the bed and Sebastian didn’t stop holding that wrist, trailing kisses over his knuckles and down his arm. He slowly started to work on Stefano’s clothes, mostly the removal of his jacket and scarf, before turning his attention to Joseph. 

Joseph swooped in, crawling on his knees to take his place before the man, working quickly and fumblingly at his buttons. He slipped the fabric off of his shoulders and licked his lips at the sight, the skin wasn’t bare but hidden under a thick layer of dark hair, flickers of pink shining through from a constellation of scars. 

Stefano lay back, bared against Sebastian’s chest as he ran his hands down through the hair, keeping him still so that Joseph could explore. He already knew about the scars on Stefano’s fingers, the ones that had cut through his knuckles so deep that he could no longer use them. The scars on his side, denting his skin, were more than he was expecting though. Stefano exhaled, rattling, as Joseph scraped his teeth over them. 

Sebastian’s hand was on Stefano’s bad cheek, under his hair, a thumb stroking over the scars there. Joseph still hadn’t seen his eye, not what it really looked like in the real world. Curiosity thrummed through him but he didn’t pry. He’d been a detective and part of him still thought of himself as one. He’d detected that Stefano was very self conscious about it. 

His breath hitched, as Joseph slid his fingers under the waist of his pants before leaving them to work on his belt. He wanted to snap the leather tight, bind Stefano to the headboard, and have his way with him. He chuckled instead, watching how Stefano’s muscles jumped under his breath, kissing and licking at a long scar that sat next to his bellybutton. 

“How are you going to handle us?” Joseph asked, laying a hand flat on Stefano’s stomach as he looked up at Sebastian. “You think you can take us both?” 

Sebastian just gave him a smile and his heart felt so warm and full. He hadn’t seen such a smile in years. His hand was gentle as it left Stefano’s wrist to take Joseph’s chin, to pull him up and closer, to kiss him with a deep groaning pull. 

“I’m just here to make sure you’re alright,” Sebastian reminded him with a wink. “You’re to play nice with each other.” 

Joseph had never been much into voyeurism but the thought of Sebastian watching got him hard anyway. He was who they were doing this for, after all. He would put on the best show that he could. 

He leaned back, pulled down Stefano’s zipper, and released him from the confines of his slacks. Stefano was barely hard, but he licked his lips as he eyed Joseph all the while. 

“Don’t worry,” Joseph said, kissing the head of his cock as he looked up at him through his eyelashes, “I’m not going to hurt you. Not unless you’re adamant about it.”  
Stefano laughed, quietly, the sound a deep rumble in his belly. 

Joseph wrapped his hand around Stefano’s cock, jerking him lazily. His slacks fell down further on his thighs, revealing more hair and the deep scar in his hip, the one that made it so hard for him to walk without stumbling. He kissed and licked and bit at the pink line, loving how Stefano started to whine above him. He smiled, knowing that such a small amount of attention was already getting a rise out of him, feeling his cock fill against Joseph’s palm. 

Sebastian was staying true to his word, other than a few kisses and encouraging words, his hands petting down Stefano’s skin, he did nothing to interfere. Still Stefano clung to him, allowing himself to rest there as Joseph got him so hard that he was bucking into his hand. He wondered if he could get Stefano to beg, to whine and whimper before him. He smiled up at him, letting his body rest as he lay down, propping himself up on his elbow. 

Stefano wasn’t too thick but he was long and the head of his cock was a bright red, coming quickly to drip precum. He licked his lips and looked up at Stefano once more before swallowing his cock down. He hummed around it, eyelashes fluttering closed. Stefano huffed and swore under his breath, something in Italian. He didn’t move though, didn’t take the initiative and thrust into Joseph’s unprepared throat and that was a bonus in his mind. 

He took Stefano slowly, at his own pace, leisurely sucking him and releasing him, to kiss at his pubis and lick under his foreskin. He wanted to take it slow, make it agonizing, until Stefano couldn’t handle it any more. He knew that he could be controlling in bed, demanding, but he wanted to see Stefano fall apart and know that it was because of him. 

He switched to bobbing his head back and forth, trying to take Stefano’s length in deeper. He was out of practice and, when he was doing this more regularly, it was Sebastian and he was a lot thicker but not quiet as long. He could take Sebastian into his throat back then. Now he had to have his hand help him. 

Stefano didn’t seem to mind as one hand went to his stomach, resting there and twitching every once in a while. Sebastian was whispering praises in his ear and he was moaning. It took a moment for Joseph to realize that the praise wasn’t too quiet for him to understand but that Sebastian was speaking in Italian. 

“When did you learn that?” Joseph smiled, giving his jaw a reprieve as his hand took over. 

“Just after we got out of STEM.” Sebastian sent a trail of kisses down Stefano’s neck. “It helped to pass the time and make things easier.”

“It’s sexy,” Joseph remarked, bringing his lips to the bottom of Stefano’s shaft so he could lick at the man’s balls. “I don’t remember you ever doing that for me.”

“Please,” Sebastian rolled his eyes, “Like you speak more than three words of Japanese.” 

Stefano huffed, his hips making small motions towards Joseph’s face. 

Joseph rubbed circles into Stefano’s hips, looking up at him. “What do you want Stefano?” He tried to keep his tone conversational, far too casual, as if he wasn’t tenting his own pair of slacks at the moment. “You want to come in my mouth? In my hand? On my face and glasses?” He knew how Sebastian liked to come on his glasses, a combination of sexy and funny as he was blinded by it. 

Stefano whined, a quiet line under his breath. 

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

“Per favore, per favore inghiottimi, per favore, ti senti così bene intorno al mio cazzo.” It came out all at one, too fast, and Joseph didn’t understand it at all anyway.   
Still he slid his tongue down the underside of Stephano’s erection and applied a single pull of suction before he asked again. 

“Mouth,” Stefano said this time, “Please, Joseph, please, it feels so good.” 

At that Joseph couldn’t argue, undoing his zipper and button and pulling his own penis out, jerking himself off as he sucked and swallowed around Stefano’s cock until he was babbling in broken Italian, his words cut off by moans and gasps. He never grabbed a hold of Joseph’s hair, never did anything, just let Joseph do whatever he wanted. 

When he came it was bitter and Joseph swallowed it down. He licked his lips, tempted to lick the oversensitive head of Stefano’s flagging erection to take away any leftover droplets. 

Stefano’s legs gave out on him and he sagged to sit beside him, directed by Sebastian. He eyed Joseph’s own thick cock hungry. His eye flicked up to catch Joseph’s as he began to groan into his own touch. Stefano didn’t ask to suck him off or reciprocate in any way, but he wrapped his arm around Joseph’s waist and pulled him closer, wrapping what fingers he could around Joseph’s hand and steering his jacking off. 

Joseph let his head lay back, let it rest against Stefano’s shoulder, as he was jerking, the pressure perfect. It didn’t take long and when he came, it was with a long winding sigh. He’d been with Sebastian a few times since he’d woken up but this was so different, regal in a way. 

What wasn’t regal was how Stefano smirked and licked his hand clean. 

\---

He was alone. The house was on fire and there was no one there. There was a scream, that of a woman, and he knew who she was, knew that if he ran through the house, looking for her, he wouldn’t find her. Laura had been dead for a long time, since before he’d ever heard of her. There was no rescue coming. 

He moved through the house like a ghost, knowing the halls like they were his own home because, even after all this time, he knew that it was the home that he and Erin and Abbey had lived in, all those years ago. He didn’t know if Laura was alive when they were a happy family, or when they were at least pretending to be. 

He went down the stairs and he could see that the fire wasn’t real, that the flames were really sunflowers, reflecting the light outside, clipping through the walls like this was some indie horror game. They swayed and moved like water, turning towards him. He huffed. 

He grabbed the ax that was imbedded in the wall and yanked it out, fingers curling tightly around the handle. There was safety in an ax, home in it. He was used to an ax. He felt like he was ready for battle. 

What he wasn’t ready for was the world turning blue with an electrical pulse, for his life to suddenly have a foreign heartbeat overlayed over it, for his breath to come out in long icy clouds. 

The door to the house flew open and there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. Ruvik was there, looking for him, finding him, easily, staring at him with those cold white gold eyes. He walked slowly and Joseph backed away in terror but there was no where to run, no where to hide. Ruvik would find him. Ruvik would always find him. 

“Sveglia, amico mio, sei qui. Qualunque cosa tu sogni non è reale. Siamo accanto a te.” 

Lips were against his forehead and they were too hot. Everything was too hot. Joseph opened his eyes to find Stefano curled around him instead of Sebastian, running a hand through his hair, looking out for him. The window was open but even that did little to cool him between the two furnaces pretending to be men. 

“I dreamed that he was still in my life, that he was looking for me,” Joseph explained, trying to whisper. 

“Ruvik?” Stefano asked. He was lying on his bad side, the scarred side, and both of his eyes were open. He was close enough that Joseph could see him without his glasses. While one eye was alive and bright blue, the other was a dull matte gray, with a crack through it, like a broken marble. The scar intersected both iris and pupil. 

Joseph nodded. He didn’t want to bring up the fact that he could see Stefano’s face, didn’t want to push him away. 

Stefano pressed a kiss to his brow and gave him a smile. “Do not worry about Ruvik. You are free from STEM and you are never going back in there, and Ruvik… I will not remind you that he is dead, I know how little that helps. But I will remind you that you are here, with Sebastian and,” He looked away but that gray eye didn’t track. “with me. We will not allow you to come to harm. He will not be able to touch you again.”

Joseph pushed away the blankets and allowed himself to be wrapped up in Stefano instead. 

“Thank you,” he mouthed against Stefano’s throat before he allowed himself to fall back asleep.


	22. Whole and Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's done! Thank you for staying with me through this mess of a story! Also Juli is trans but Sebastian is dumb.

Sebastian tongued at the scar in his lip, leaning against the railing, a bottle of soda in his hand. Drinking from a glass bottle made it easier to forget that it wasn’t a beer. Standing in the crisp morning air made it easier to forget that he wasn’t drinking. There wasn’t much to the yard, hidden away from the world with a beige fence of old dried out wood. It was going to have to be replaced. 

He could hear cursing, but it wasn’t in English and the girls were still asleep so he didn’t have to scold anyone. Stefano looked good, off in a t shirt and jeans, but good. In fact, the jeans may have been too good for this kind of work, a little too tight and form fitting. He was digging up a part of the yard in the corner, trying to make the ground level. He did have a chair and his cane leaning upon it nearby, just in case, but so far he hadn’t needed it. 

Things were going good. They weren’t perfect, but they were good. 

Joseph had the right thing in mind for a cold, crisp morning, better than Sebastian’s of having a soda for breakfast, coming out in his pajamas with two coffees in hand. He was still straining himself, Sebastian could see it. Had seen it since the very beginning. Joseph was fine with being helped, with taking instruction and he loved the praise of a job well done, but he wouldn’t stop. Sebastian often saw him massaging aching muscles from overworking and could see how tired he was. 

“That doesn’t look much like a breakfast,” Joseph chuckled, leaning against the railing beside him. 

Sebastian took the coffee from him. “And this is?” 

“The waffle iron is heating up,” Joseph raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ve got to pay my way somehow, might as well be by taking care of you.”

Sebastian wrapped his arm around Joseph’s back, his hand on the far side of his head, and he turned him so that he could kiss him, nice and soft, on the lips. “You always take such good care of me, Joseph.” There was a little bit of pink to Joseph’s ears and to his cheeks, either a dusting of blush or of cold, Sebastian couldn’t tell. “It feels good, to be able to take care of you back.”

Then Joseph’s forehead crinkled and he licked his lips. “What are you drinking?” 

Sebastian laughed, handing over the bottle. 

“Big red?” Joseph gawked, “I haven’t seen this since I was a kid!” 

He put the bottle on the railing, between the coffees, and took Sebastian’s cheeks in his warm hands. He kissed Sebastian harder then, pulling him in, chasing the almost bubblegum taste on his tongue. “Here I thought it was beer for breakfast again.”

“No,” Sebastian hummed into the kiss, suddenly wishing that he’d rebuilt the fence, made it a bit taller. All this talk about taking care of each other made him want to show Joseph his gratitude. “I’m trying to be better than that now.”

Joseph pulled away, looking up at him with wonderment, “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

The smile on his lips was intoxicating. “Good. That’s really good.” 

A sharp “Cazzo!” coming from the corner of the yard had them both laughing, real, genuine laughs. 

\---

Taking care of Lily was hard, but he’d never had to take care of her alone. Even though he was technically a single parent, he’d never had her while he was alone. He’s never had her when he was at his lowest either. Taking care of Emily was even harder though. They didn’t know each other well and he was never sure of what to say or how to act around her. 

She was also hitting puberty and that was rough on all kids. Lily had already started but it was later for Emily and he didn’t know how to handle it. He didn’t know how to give her the talk, what to say since the anatomy and puberty books didn’t really fit for her. He didn’t want to use the wrong parts of the book and, if he used the girl parts, it wouldn’t translate correctly. 

Stefano did most of her parenting, which was fine, although he did come to Sebastian with a lot of questions and stress from it. Sebastian had taken classes on it, with Myra, back when she was pregnant. Stefano was doing all of this blind and he only had the one eye to start with. 

Still, their family had grown and it was uncomfortable and awkward but it was still good. Sebastian found himself talking to Juli about it, a lot more than he’d expected. She had offered her services, not in a “a child needs a mother” way but in a way that he had never expected. She said that she had experience with what Emily was going through. Sebastian didn’t ask what that meant, but he assumed that meant that she had a sister or a friend who had gone through something similar. 

She was quiet and thoughtful and an artist, following after her dad. She seemed to have a camera with her at all times. She had a lot in common with Stefano, which was a surprise. She just seemed to emulate him a lot, and she was even growing a slight accent, though Sebastian would have been surprised if Stefano had noticed it. 

He waited until bedtime, had Stefano and Joseph tuck Lily into bed, but took Emily aside. At first, she looked nervous, probably thinking that she was trouble. He sat her down on the couch next to him. He didn’t know how to have this conversation. It wasn’t one he’d ever expected to have. 

“So, I know you’ve noticed that your body is changing, we’ve already talked about puberty and all that,” he started, nervous. He wished he had something to drink, just something that he could keep in his hands. 

She nodded, just as nervous as he was. 

“There’s things that we can do, if your developing in a way you don’t like. We can go to a doctor and get you on HRT or hormone blockers or something. I’m not going to push you, one way or the other, and if Stefano or Joseph do you can come to me and I’ll stop them, though I doubt they would.”

Relief flooded her face and her body relaxed in one large sigh. She must have expected something else. The tension was obvious and he didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before. She actually looked like she was going to cry about it. 

“Isn’t that expensive?” she asked, her voice quiet and slightly crackly. 

“Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Why not?”

“Mobius took a lot from all of us and I have no qualms with taking things back from them.”

Her eyes went wide at that, “You’re stealing?”

He laughed, “No, no. I mean, yes? I guess. I’m not sure. We’re being compensated for what they did to us by the sole remaining Mobius member, so I don’t think that’s theft.”

“Oh, okay then. I just didn’t want you to get into trouble for it.”

He flashed her a smile, “We won’t. And you don’t need to come up with an answer right now. You can think about it and let us know. We’ll support you either way.”

“Oh, I know.” 

“You do?” he raised an eyebrow. 

She shrugged, “Dad promised me he’d love me forever, no matter what. I wasn’t sure if that was true when he saw me out here in the real world, since I was pretending to be his Emily while in there, but it was. And you all love him and you love me too. I know that it’s bad for me, not to care, that my parents died in that fire, but I don’t really. They didn’t want me to be me. You guys do and that feels a lot better.”

They hadn’t talked much about Emily’s birth parents. He wondered if they should have. He knew that they were doing better though, since she felt so much safer with them. 

\---

He stayed up later than he should of, some nights, when he got in a mood. He was in one that night too, sneaking downstairs to the kitchen, making himself some coffee, and pulling out all of his old files. It was decaf, at least, he knew how the others worried about him, before going through everything. Photos, files, documents, and reports, all properly organized and well labeled. 

He knew who he saw that day, walking around town with Joseph. He new what he saw, in his head. He didn’t know what he would do if he ever found Leslie, but he knew that he wanted to. He wanted Leslie to be alive and safe out there, for that last, brief moment he saw in Beacon hospital to be true. There had been something off about him though, something wrong. It was in his eyes and in the way that he was standing. He knew that Joseph noticed it too. That wasn’t just Leslie that they saw. That was Ruvik. 

He’d thought about going into being a private investigator a few times, either to take his mind off of this or to have the connections to find information and the excuse to use them. It was a mystery that he wanted to solve. Why them and what was Ruvik doing now that he was free? His hopes in bringing back his sister were ruined, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try again. 

He looked at a map of the area that they’d seen Ruvik in. There was nothing there that was out of the ordinary, not unless there was something underneath them, some basement that was a terrible lab or something. Mobius had been a massive facility and it had been hidden away under a major road. He doubted that Ruvik had the funding or the power to do something like that, but he could easily rent the basement of one of the many antique shops out there. 

He could pour himself into this. He could get so deep in that he forgot the rest of the world. He could forget that time existed and just live inside of his thoughts and the taste of coffee. He shuffled the papers, went over his notes and scrawled new ones. He wondered how far he could get walking the area, asking store keeps if they were renting space to anyone. It was a wild goose chase but it was something. 

Soft, warm hands were on his shoulders and he jumped, turning, wild. But it wasn’t a monster, even if he told himself he was sometimes. Joseph had a small, tired smile on his lips and he wasn’t wearing his glasses, but he was wearing threadbare pajamas. Sebastian didn’t know why both Joseph and Stefano had decided that his shirts made for good pajama tops but he wasn’t going to complain. 

“Come to bed,” Joseph mused, pulling closer, leaning his front on Sebastian’s back. “It’s 3am and the bed is cold.”

“Stefano’s a radiator,” Sebastian reminded him. 

“Yes, but he’s Emily’s radiator tonight.”

“Bad dreams?” 

“Is there another kind?”

Sebastian allowed himself to be pulled out of his chair and to his feet. Joseph was getting stronger, every day. He was putting on weight too. He almost looked like his old self, when he wore enough layers. He let Sebastian finish his coffee and put the papers away before he took him by the hand once more, leading the way up the stairs. 

“What were you looking at, anyway?” 

“Nothing important,” Sebastian replied and he didn’t know if it was a lie or not. 

\---

Sometimes, his hands would shake and his mouth would twitch to be around something. A pen or a lollipop or something of that nature was usually enough and the tapping of it against the table was soothing in a way, even though it annoyed everyone else. The stains on his fingers were all but gone and his teeth were cleaner and, when Stefano went on a jog with him, which was an odd concept on its own since Stefano mostly power walked with his cane, he could go for longer and with much more ease, but he could still taste the cigarette at the back of his throat sometimes. He needed a hit. He needed to relax. 

“Are you coming, mia caro?” Stefano smiled at him, bringing his attention away from the craving and to the present. They were at the park, the girls on the swings, working their leg muscles, while Stefano kept a watchful eye on them. There was a small grove behind the park with a small little trail winding through it and Stefano had had the bright idea that it was perfect for a little hike. It was something that all of their legs, in their varying degrees of recovery, could handle. 

Sebastian nodded and the girls came to a stop on the swings, dragging their legs through the wood chips. Joseph, clad in a sweater and a pair of black gloves, hooked Sebastian’s arm with his, leading him and leaning on him at the same time. 

“Are you alright, Seb?” he asked, quiet enough that the others wouldn’t hear. 

“Yeah,” Sebastian chewed on his lip. “Just, y’know, dying for a smoke.”

Joseph chuckled and leaned on him hard enough to knock him over a little bit, just for fun. “I don’t think I’ve seen you smoke since I got out of STEM.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes, “That bastard up there made me quit.” he gestured towards Stefano, “No smoking, no drinking, I don’t know how I’m still alive.”

“I’m amazed you lasted this long. After how bad it was I didn’t think you’d quit until you were dead.” 

“It wasn’t that bad.” 

Joseph threw him a look that was full of anger and he knew that he had been a piece of shit to Joseph back then but only then did he see it confirmed. It was in the past but Sebastian had never thanked him, not well enough, not correctly. 

“I had to make sure your didn’t lose your job,” he hissed. 

“I know,” Sebastian whispered. 

“And I had to make sure that you never choked to death on your own vomit.”

“I know.” 

“And I had to take care of you, all of the damn time, because you were so drunk that you could hardly function. I had to take over cases and paperwork and every-

“I know!” the last one was loud enough to draw the attention of the girls and Stefano, but Sebastian stopped walking, just standing there for a moment. “I’m sorry, alright? I’m trying to be better. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me and then, when you were gone, I sank even further, and there was no one left to care if I lived or not. I let you down a million times and I don’t know how to thank you for saving me back then. I never did. And I know that nothing I do will make it up to you.”

Joseph deflated, his eyebrows pinched. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, scratching at the back of his neck through his gloves, “I shouldn’t have shouted. I’m glad you’re doing better.”

It just made the urge stronger though. Walking, not talking at all, Stefano taking Sebastian’s place in being Joseph’s support, it just made Sebastian want a cigarette more than before. He had an idea though, staring at Joseph’s back. It wasn’t great and it was, in no way enough to pay him back for everything he’d done, but it was something that he wanted to do. 

He let himself fall behind a bit as he stared at his phone, looking to see if there was any nearby, if he could get some for Joseph on the way home. He allowed himself a smile when he found it. 

The hike, all in all, was only about fifteen minutes long and it went around in a circle so they ended up back at the park. Sebastian was glad to get in the car, excitement clouding his earlier urges. The cravings had subsided, like they always did, though the stress of Joseph yelling at him had made it last longer than usual. He turned on some music, sang along, acted like nothing was amiss. Stefano was staring at him in obvious terror from the passenger seat. 

“I’m not that bad a singer, am I?” he chuckled. 

“I’ve never heard you do that in my life,” Stefano gaped, “and to Christina Aguilera, of all things.”

That got a full laugh out of him, and out of Joseph too. The girls followed suit, even if they didn’t know what was funny, it was still good to laugh. 

It was only a few blocks before Joseph noticed that something was off. They weren’t going the right way home. Sebastian pulled into the parking lot of a little strip mall though, saying that he had to pick something up really quick, and he saw Joseph’s eyes narrow in contemplation. He probably thought Sebastian was going for cigarettes or something. They all stayed in the car though, letting him rush in and out as quickly as he could. 

It wasn’t a convenience store that he rushed into but a little lunchy cafe. He ordered and waited and paid, constantly looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was coming after him. No one did. He tapped a pen on the counter. And then the food was ready and bagged and he was rushing back to the car. 

He didn’t get anything for himself. He didn’t get anything for anyone else. He got into the car and handed the bag over to Joseph. 

“Is this supposed to be an apology?” Joseph asked, eyeing the bag. 

“No,” Sebastian shook his head as he put the car into drive, watching Joseph in the rear view mirror. “It’s a thank you. It’s not enough, but it’s something.” 

“What is that?” Emily made a face as Joseph opened the bag. 

“Sebastian, is this a poutine?” 

\---

Juli was with the girls, taking them to an arcade. She’d said that the three of them needed some alone time and Sebastian couldn’t have agreed more. They were barely out the door when he grabbed Stefano and pushed him up against the wall, biting and kissing at his lips and jaw, feeling the man’s gloved hands hiking up his shirt to massage his sides, the bit of fat that had taken root there, so hard to get rid of and too adored by the two men for him to really try. 

Joseph came up behind him, stealing him away from Stefano, who groaned in the most hurt and yet aroused way, since Joseph was pinning Sebastian’s wrists behind his back as he dipped him, bringing his head low enough for him to kiss. 

“Upstairs with you,” Joseph growled in his ear as he released him. “Get yourself ready for us.” 

Sebastian could hardly disobey though obeying was also difficult. He wanted to stay there, with them, make sure that they got along. Stefano flashed him a smirk that made his knees weak though and that was enough of an incentive to get him up to their bed. 

He could hear them talking as he left, coming to some sort of decision, figuring out what they were going to do to him. Things had been tense between the three of them, slowly getting better, but he hadn’t yet been shared by them. He’d slept with them both, when the house was quiet enough, but they hadn’t done anything together, that he knew of, since Sebastian had held Stefano steady for Joseph to suck him off. And that was an experience that Sebastian kept replaying in his head, whenever he had the itch to masturbate, though he was so busy with them he hardly had time to. Usually in the shower. 

He was naked in record time, pulling out the lube from the bedside table to slick himself up. He was used to one of them doing this part for him, but he didn’t mind doing it himself. They needed their space, they needed to figure out what they were doing. 

Sebastian let his mind wander as he knelt down on the bed, on three points, circling his rim before breaching himself with the first finger. He wondered if they would both fuck his ass and how much his body could handle that, and his half hard cock sprang to fullness. He wanted to be pressed between them, both rutting into him, Stefano behind him while he knelt over Joseph, both of them telling him how good he felt while he cried and moaned. 

Probably not, not until they were more used to this. But it still, filled his fantasies and slipping another finger inside of himself was easy. 

From where he was he couldn’t hear them talking anymore. He’d enjoyed kissing Stefano against the wall and he hoped that Joseph had filled that space, that they were enjoying each other, getting each other hard for him. He loved them both, so much, and he wanted them to enjoy each other, love each other, just as much as he did. It had been hard so far, for Stefano especially, but in the past few months everything had gotten so much better between them. 

A third finger and he was clutching the duvet, groaning as he pumped his fingers in and out of himself. The urge to touch himself, to get himself off, was so strong, but that wasn’t his place. He knew it, so well. He was good at it. He wouldn’t do anything unless he knew Stefano and Joseph wanted him too. 

There was chuckling from behind him, from the door, and Sebastian didn’t even pause as he looked over his shoulder at the two of them. They were both a mess, hair mussed, glasses crooked, and clothing half pulled free. Stefano’s scarf was loose around his neck and half of his shirt buttons were undone, as Joseph’s hand, bereft of black leather, was shoved into it, stroking against that dense fur and one of his nipples. Joseph was right behind him, vest gone, pants sliding down his thighs, and tongue and teeth against the tough muscle of Stefano’s throat. 

Sebastian couldn’t stop from groaning as he saw the pair, as he saw them pleasuring one another, eyes on him, although Joseph probably couldn’t see him very well. 

“He’s being very good, isn’t he?” Joseph asked as he bit on Stefano’s earlobe, making him whimper. “You want to fuck him first?” 

Stefano bit his lip as he nodded, stroking his cock. “Pull those out of yourself now, mia caro,” Stefano soothingly ordered, coming close, “Let me see if you’re ready for me.” 

Sebastian didn’t dare groan as he pulled his fingers free, instead burying his face against the bed so he could pull his ass cheeks apart with his hands, show himself off for the artist. Stefano chuckled as he looked Sebastian over and, when he brought his tongue down to lick at his hole, Sebastian bit off a growl, fighting the urge to push back onto Stefano’s tongue. 

“Hold still for me,” Stefano demanded and there was no dominance in his tone, just softness that made Sebastian feel like puddy. He did what he could as Stefano gripped his hips and licked and spit into him until he was sopping wet, saliva dripping down his shaking thighs. He had started to whine at some point, trying not to beg, to let them go at their own pace. 

Stefano pulled way, pulling back on Sebastian’s hips as he did, until he was only half on the bed, his feet on the floor and his hole in the perfect position for Stefano to push inside. He did too, groaning as he sheathed himself fully. Sebastian’s teeth had sunk into the duvet and he gagged himself, not wanting it to be obvious just how heavenly this felt.

There were a few teasing jabs to his prostate as Stefano experimented with his thrusts and Sebastian was groaning around the fabric, eyes rolling at the pleasure. There was movement on his right, a now naked knee pushing into the bed. Joseph walked on his knees until he was in front of Sebastian, only sitting when his thick cock was in range of Sebastian’s mouth. 

“No need to hide it, Sebastian,” Joseph grinned down at him, running his hand through his hair, “We’re here alone, you can be as loud as you want.” 

He spat out the duvet and gave a shaky moan as Stefano found a rhythm inside of him. Joseph’s thumb trailed down from his hair down to his open mouth and inside. A nod and Sebastian closed his mouth, humming around the digit, tasting sweat and leather. Joseph looked good, more muscular than before since he was working out so often for his physical therapy and his weight was almost back up to standard. He looked so damn good that Sebastian was salivating around the thumb in his mouth, wanting to lick Joseph’s chest and see the muscles jump under the skin. 

Then it was pulled away and Sebastian was groaning, wanting and unable to rub his cock against the bed, feeling Stefano pick up speed. His hands left Sebastian’s hips so he could wrap his arms around Sebastian’s chest. He could feel the fabric of Stefano’s shirt against his skin and he felt absolutely beneath the man, not just because he was being half crushed by him but because being naked under someone still dressed always made him feel a bit like an object to be used, lesser than them, and he loved the feeling. 

Stefano wasn’t just mushing against him for that reason though, but to pull Sebastian up a bit, let Joseph slide his cock up and against his still open, panting mouth. Joseph was so much thicker than Stefano was, even if his cock was a bit shorter, and Sebastian loved the stretch it always gave his jaw. Smoking may have given him an oral fixation, but Joseph’s cock didn’t help. He moaned as Stefano’s hips started to sap against his ass and Joseph started to hump his face, his hands in Sebastian’s hair to keep him still for it. 

Sebastian didn’t have to do anything. He could just lay there and take it, for as long as they wanted, however they wanted it. 

And then Joseph was moving, pushing deeper into his throat as he leaned over him. The weight on his back lessened and, while he was still being thrust into from both ends, he looked up, seeing Stefano and Joseph kissing about him, hard and hot and like he wasn’t even there. He moaned on the cock in his mouth, warmth flooding his chest as he watched them. This didn’t look like an act, there was no nervousness here. This looked like all of their trying was finally starting to work. 

When the kiss ended they went rougher and Sebastian could hear his moans picking up in pitch as Stefano slammed in deep, over and over again. He had both of his knees on the bed now, letting himself pound into Sebastian and do more than just brush against his prostate with every push. Sebastian had to fight the urge to gag as Joseph fucked his throat, hands in his hair almost pulling so hard that it tore out. 

Stefano came with a curse through grit teeth and Sebastian growled as he felt the hot cum spurt into him. 

Joseph wasn’t done yet and Sebastian hadn’t even been touched. Stefano stayed inside of him until he was done with his orgasm, hissing as he pulled out and climbed off of him, laying down beside him. Joseph pulled out of his mouth, looking Sebastian over with so much care. 

“Lay down on your back, Sebastian,” Joseph ordered, much harder than Stefano ever had, “put your head in Stefano’s lap. I want to see you.” 

Sebastian adjusted, trying not to drip any cum or lubricant as he shifted. Joseph took a good look at his hole as he moved, decided that he didn’t need lube for such a wet mess, and the moment that Sebastian’s head was where he’d demanded it be, filled him up. Sebastian moaned louder now, more openly, nothing obstructing his mouth. There was a burn, both from oversensitivity and from just how big Joseph was. He hardly cared about that though, because Stefano was running his fingers through Sebastian’s hair so gently, and his gaze was soft and perfect. 

Joseph fucked him hard and he didn’t dare hide the pleasure in his voice. His stomach jiggled with every push he loved the way that Joseph was watching him, transfixed. 

He almost screamed when Stefano reached down and grabbed his cock, keeping his fist loose enough that he didn’t even need to jack Sebastian off. Joseph’s thrusts moved him enough for that and Sebastian arched his back, eyebrows knotted as he felt Joseph go deeper, asking for permission with nothing more than a look. 

“That’s right, Sebastian, fuck yourself on my dick,” Joseph groaned, “It’s the only way you’re going to get off.” 

“Don’t be cruel,” Stefano tutted, “He’s doing so well for us.” 

Joseph didn’t respond, not when Stefano leaned forward again, in a way which must have been uncomfortable with Sebastian’s head shoved against his now soft penis. There was no sign of pain though, nor of caring about that, as Stefano kissed Joseph again. Sebastian started to buck his hips, filling the o of Stefano’s hand as fast as he could, watching them. He could see the movement of tongue against cheek, strings of spittle between them, hear the moans in both of their throats as they didn’t fight each other for dominance, they both already had it over him. 

Sebastian came as he slammed himself down onto Joseph’s cock, his own almost free of Stefano’s hand. He could feel himself tighten, feel Joseph flood him, his cum mixing with Stefano’s. He thought that he was going to white out, it felt so good, to cum and cum and cum, so much ejaculate spilling out onto Stefano’s hand. 

Stefano chuckled as he brought said hand to his mouth and licked it clean. Sebastian was pants and still he moaned at the sight of that clever pink tongue working around his fingers. Joseph hadn’t even pulled out by the time Stefano was grabbing him, more roughly this time, to kiss Sebastian’s cum into his mouth. Joseph moaned around the taste and Sebastian wasn’t that young anymore but he was still getting hard all over again, slowly and painfully. 

“You’re finally getting along,” he grinned, loosely, though he didn’t think it was really the loosest part of him. 

Then they were both kissing him, one on his forehead and neck, the other on his lips. He could taste himself but he could also taste them and he knew that they were okay. The three of them were going to stick together and no one was going to take them apart again. Their daughters were safe and they were always going to be. He wondered if they could get Erin down there, get all of the girls together. That was for another time though. For now it was just time to get cleaned up and fall asleep and be whole together.


End file.
